


Our Temple, Your Tomb

by CanineKitten



Category: Naruto
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Blood Drinking, Bloodplay, Canonical Character Death, Dark, M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-08-08 15:04:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16431710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CanineKitten/pseuds/CanineKitten
Summary: When Naruto went to party with his college classmates that night, it was with the notion that the worst thing that could happen was that he might end up puking in the gutter somewhere.He had been so fatally mistaken.





	1. Cleansed

**Author's Note:**

> This is another old fic that I like a lot, and now I'm finally finishing and posting it! I love the supernatural, and especially vampires, so that was one trope that I just had to write at some point :3 I initially wanted to post the last chapter on Halloween, but the story just keeps growing so now I have no idea when it'll end...
> 
> (Ironically, the song at the beginning is named The Wolf. But there's just something about the text that sets the right mood for the story.)

 

We took you out from

Your mother’s womb

Our temple, your tomb

Can be your pick

Not pawned

The poisonous blood

 

_The wolf_ by Fever Ray

 

 

 

The screams and crying followed him as he escaped into the woods. He ran till he couldn't stay on his feet anymore, but the agonized sounds of humans in pain seemed to follow him regardless. He tasted earth and moss, and realized he was lying face down on the ground. He moved his head, gulping down air, and lay there, hoping unconsciousness would take him and bring him away from this nightmare.

A party crashed by vampires... That hadn't happened for some time. As a matter of fact, people had been told that the vampires were decreasing in number and that they soon would be gone. Maybe that was what had spurred them into this act of rashness.

Naruto was lying there on the ground, regaining his breath and trying not to think of how his best friend had looked when his throat had been thorn open, when be suddenly realized he was not alone. There hadn't been a single sound or movement, but Naruto knew beyond any doubt that he was being watched. The hairs on his neck and arms stood on end and he felt dread pool in the pit of his stomach. Very slowly, he lifted off the ground, and craned his neck around to peer into the darkness. Suddenly he was overwhelmed by the complete stillness that the thick of the forest provided. He was far from civilization, far from anyone who could have helped him....

The vampire stepped out of the darkness like a shadow detaching itself from the pits of hell. It was clad entirely in black, the only thing standing out from the darkness being the reflection from the waning moon in its carnivore eyes. The vampire stalked over to Naruto, who sat frozen on the ground, and leant forward, grabbing Naruto’s chin with fingers as cold and strong as iron. Naruto shuddered, but not for the reason he should. If the vampire noticed, he ignored it.

"You gave me a good chase," the vampire said, its voice like barbed wire covered in silk. Naruto wasn't sure if it was terrifying or sensual.

"Just a shame you seem to have lost your spirit."

The vampire crouched down in front of Naruto, forcing him to meet his gaze. Naruto closed his eyes.

"Or maybe not," the vampire added.

Naruto could feel its eyes assessing him, searching him inside out with only a look.

"You're turned on," the vampire whispered.

Naruto shuddered again and wished he could die right now. He'd never been so mortified his entire life.

The vampire chuckled, its voice hoarse.

"It's not so unusual," he said. "What's unusual is... That I haven’t even bitten you yet."

Naruto felt the vampire's breath on his neck (surprisingly warm. He'd always thought it would be cold). He thought he sensed the vampire opening his mouth, baring its fangs, and in reaction to that, he bared his throat to him.

The vampire hesitated for a long moment, wherein Naruto was practically shaking in terrified anticipation.

And then the fangs sunk into his flesh. He gave a startled gasp. His eyes flew open. He saw pearly white skin and hair as black as the night before his eyes rolled back in his head, and he finally lost consciousness.

 

\-------

 

He awoke when he was dropped unceremoniously onto a very hard mattress. Everything around him was enveloped in complete darkness, but the scent and feel of the place told him he was indoors.

"I brought you something, aniki," the voice of the same vampire who had bitten him said tenderly from somewhere above him.

Aniki... It meant older brother, he knew.

He felt something move towards him, soft and soundless like a piece of silk slithering to the floor. He tried to move away, but found his limbs were heavy and foreign to him, and when he moved his head he felt dizzy. The something was right next to him, but it had no body temperature.... Another vampire, most like. The two vampires seemed to have an exchange of sorts, before Naruto’s kidnapper left. Naruto felt like calling out to him not to leave him, but his tongue were as uncooperative as the rest of him, and what kind of help did he expect anyway?

For the second time that day, or night, if it even was the same night, he was unable to do anything as a vampire leaned over him, sinking sharp teeth into his flesh, gently, as though it actually cared what Naruto felt. If he could have made a sound, he would have moaned, but as it was he stayed entirely silent as he slowly slipped out of consciousness.

 

\---------

 

The second time he awoke, he felt entirely out of the loop. He had no recollection of anything, and for a moment he panicked. Where was he? What was this place that smelled of mold and incense and... blood? He scrunched up his nose. A fucking vampire lair. He was in a vampire lair. Then the rest of his memories came tumbling forth. He closed his eyes in pain and embarrassment as he remembered how he had been passed along from one vampire to the next. Speaking of which... Why was he not dead?

He looked around. There came light from some source because he could make out his surroundings. It seemed to be a spacious room, probably an attic, judging by the sloping roof. Most of the windows were nailed shut, except one, which was positioned out of Naruto's view behind the heavy curtain hanging down on the side of the bed. He knew there was a window there, though, because the soft, cold light that illuminated parts of the room had to be daylight. He thought vampires loathed daylight.

He turned his head and felt the wounds on his neck pulse in pain. He groaned softly and raised one shaky hand to rub at his neck. To his surprise, it seemed that someone had tended to his wounds, because he felt no excess blood drying on his skin, and the wounds felt strangely smooth. Come to think of it... Someone had taken care of the rest of him too, stripping him down to nothing before covering him with a silk sheet so supple that it felt like a part of him. Washing him too, because he felt surprisingly fresh for someone who'd tumbled through a forest, rolled in the mud and been manhandled by a vampire.

His eyes roamed uninterestedly over the darker parts of the room that he couldn't make out, and landed on the sleeping vampire beside him. His eyes nearly bugged out of his head when he realized he'd been lying right next to a vampire this entire time without realizing it. Then he really looked at the vampire, and found it impossible to look away. The vampire, no... The man was more beautiful than any man or woman Naruto had seen his entire life. He was sleeping soundly, his curtain of silky black hair lying spread out around his head, his alabaster skin looking almost translucent in the sparse light of the room. He looked peaceful and entirely harmless, and Naruto had trouble overcoming a sudden desire to touch. The man was facing him, lying on his side, clothed in a black and red silk yukata that was nearly as beautiful as him, his hands lying motionless on the mattress in front of him. Naruto swallowed thickly, realizing he'd nearly forgotten to breathe.

He managed to struggle into a sitting position, his body still feeling a bit lethargic, and, still watching the sleeping vampire, he edged towards the side of the bed. He might be transfixed, but he wasn’t so stupid that he didn't use this opportunity to try and get away. The vampire didn't even stir.

Feeling pretty sure about himself, Naruto placed one foot on the floor, still watching the vampire, and then turned slowly away from him. He nearly jumped out of his own skin in fright when he turned from one vampire to find another standing right in front of him. He shuffled backwards immediately, choosing the sleeping vampire over the wake one.

"Where do you think you’re going?”

"I-I needed to go to the bathroom," Naruto said weakly, shocked by the terrifying impact the vampire had on him. In front of him, he immediately turned into trembling putty.

"Really?" The vampire said softly. "It looked like you were sneaking away."

Naruto felt a tremor go through him. He didn't want to displease this vampire. He scared him shitless. He was tall, had eyes as cold as polished obsidian, and was nearly as beautiful as the man lying next to Naruto. At least, he would have been if not for the cold look he was giving Naruto. He was dressed entirely in black, and his dark hair framed his face like the shiny feathers of a raven.

"Sasuke?" A soft voice said behind Naruto, and made him turn his head to see that the sleeping vampire had woken up. He was blinking blearily grey eyes, his gaze unfocused.

"I'm here," the other vampire said, his voice adapting a tenderness that Naruto had heard only once before and that felt startlingly out of place from such a cold being.

He realized this was the same vampire who had captured him, who had brought him here yesterday... Or... Whichever day it had been...  

The beautiful vampire sat up, but it seemed to take him great effort.

"Don't strain yourself, Itachi," the other vampire said, crawling onto the bed right past Naruto, who shied away.

"I'm fine," the beautiful vampire, Itachi, said, sounding tired. "You don't need to baby me."

The other vampire, Sasuke, apparently, ignored his brother.

"The sun has just risen," he said. "You shouldn't sleep at night. It makes you rested in the morning."

Suddenly Sasuke reached out and grabbed Naruto, who had been edging slowly away from them, and pulled him roughly over.

"Here," he said, pushing Naruto down against the mattress and exposing his throat with one hand. "It will do you good."

Naruto lay entirely still in terrified expectation. He wished he wasn't so compliant. He wanted to make it difficult for the arrogant vampire, but his rational mind knew that it wasn't his fault. He was like a pray infected by the poison of a snake, unable to fight no matter how much he wanted to.

"Let him go," he heard Itachi say with a sigh. When Sasuke didn't immediately comply, Itachi grabbed his hand, Naruto felt it against his throat, and loosened the grip.

"You're hurting him," Itachi said softly. "I'll feed when I'm hungry, Sasuke. You don't need to watch over me constantly."

"I need to watch him," Sasuke said, underlining his words by squeezing Naruto's shoulder painfully hard. "He tried to escape just now."

"Of course he did," Itachi said gently. "But he wouldn't get far, and you know it. Go get some rest. I'll expect you back here by dusk."

When Sasuke left, Itachi went back to sleep, and Naruto stayed where he was. He should flee, he knew, but somehow, escape didn't seem that certain anymore.

 

\------

 

When Naruto awoke the third time, it was to be manhandled out of the room by two men, although it would probably just take one to restrain Naruto. He was too weak to fight anyway. Their hands were scorching hot against Naruto’s skin. They didn't bother to let him get dressed and practically dragged him through corridors and down stairs like he was a sack potatoes. Finally, he was thrown into a room, but he didn't even get the chance to assess his surroundings as he collapsed on the floor and stayed there.

"There’s no need to treat him like an animal," a voice said. It was strangely monotone, but there was still an edge of displeasure in it.

"We only brought him here as you told us to," a sullen, male voice answered.

"You should treat the king’s personal provider with some dignity. If the prince hears this, he won’t be lenient."

The only answer was a soft grumbling and then the door slammed, indicating someone had left.

Shortly after, Naruto felt a heavy blanket settle over his body, and then the monotone voice spoke again.

"I lit a fire since I assumed you would be cold. If you'd just move over to it, I'll have someone bring your food."

The prospect of food immediately caught Naruto's attention. He struggled to sit up, and looked around. The room was mostly shrouded in darkness, except from by the fire, which lit up two plush chairs. Naruto then looked at the vampire who had spoken to him. He had red hair in such a vivid color Naruto was inclined to think it was dyed. Vampires didn't need to worry about hair growth, so why not... Also, the vampire had a pair of the most startlingly clear green eyes Naruto had ever seen. Naruto blinked a few times, realizing this vampire, too, was extremely beautiful. Come to think of it, he'd never seen a vampire before, no one had ever taken a photo of a vampire, and those who had survived vampire-attacks either went mad or described the vampires as terrible and fearsome, so he'd always believed they were horrible to look at. Although the victims hadn't described the vampires as ugly, they hadn't exactly said they were pretty either.

Naruto blinked slowly, and noticed that the vampire was regarding him with concern.

"I'm... I'll... Food sounds good," Naruto said, and shakily got to his feet. He staggered over to the fire, and realized just how cold he was when he felt the warmth from it.

He settled on the floor, as close to the warmth as he could get without getting burned, and was still sitting there when the food arrived. Despite the meat being raw, the food still made Naruto's mouth water. He wolfed down every last piece, and when he was done he couldn't even recall what he'd eaten. He only knew that for the first time in what felt like a very long time, he felt sated.

The redheaded vampire had seated himself in one of the plush chairs, surprisingly close to the fire, and was watching Naruto with eyes that were impossible to read.

"Um... Is it possible to get some clothes too?" Naruto asked, wrapping the blanket he was wearing more tightly around himself.

"I'm afraid I'm in no position to give you clothes," the vampire said. Naruto thought that was a weird answer, but didn't really feel he was in the position to demand things.

Suddenly, the vampire got to his feet.

"It's time I brought you back," he said, and started to walk towards the door. Naruto followed at a distance, wondering if it would be possible to outrun a vampire.

The redheaded vampire stopped at the door, and, as though reading Naruto's mind turned around and said; "Just because I'm only one person, and you feel restored, it doesn't mean you should try to run. As a matter of fact, I'd strongly discourage it. I wont be lenient if you disregard my hospitality."

Feeling put down like a petulant child, Naruto followed meekly in the vampires wake all the way up to the attic, even though each step that brought him closer to his prison left him feeling heavier than lead.

 

\---------

 

The next time he awoke, it was to the sound of rattling chains. The prince, as he was called by the human servants, or Sasuke, as his brother called him, had decided it best if Naruto was put in chains, so some men with collars peeking out of their shirts had come up to roughly fit him into a metal collar that hardly was his size. Naruto rubbed at his neck where the metal band bit into his flesh, and wondered how the vampires were expecting to feed off him while he was wearing it. Come to think of it, no one had fed off him since the first two times. He was starting to hope that maybe they just wanted to keep him for aesthetical reasons...

This morning, Naruto was surprised to see that the light from the hidden window cast a shadow on the floor. Someone was standing by the window, directly in the sunlight. Naruto gently lifted the curtain framing the bed, and peered out behind it. Framed in the light from the window stood the dark figure of the prince. Naruto could recognize that distinct hairstyle anywhere. The prince was standing with his back to Naruto, so he didn't notice him staring. Or… so Naruto thought, until the vampire suddenly turned and looked directly at him. In the bleary morning light, Sasuke's face looked almost milky white, and his eyes were nothing but black pools of infinite darkness beneath the fringe of his hair. The prince's expression was completely unguarded. Naruto realized he wasn't meant to see that, because Sasuke's expression slowly hardened, making his eyes glow dangerously. Naruto let the curtain fall back in place and lay back down on the bed. Sasuke didn't move from his position by the window and Naruto was glad he hadn't made himself deserving of the prince's dangerous temperament. But as he lay there, all he could think of were those infinitely deep and sad eyes in that heart achingly beautiful face, and wondered what about vampires made them so terrifying and yet so vulnerable.  

By nighttime, Itachi was still not awake. He looked even more pale and dead than vampires usually did. When he finally woke up, he called feebly for Sasuke, who was with him within seconds.

"I'm here," he heard Sasuke murmur, and then there was a rustle of clothes.

Naruto’s eyes had started adapting better to the darkness, and he could easily make out the shapes of the two brothers, and what they were doing. He was shocked when he realized that Sasuke was pulling back his jacket and shirt and lying down on the bed, Itachi on top of him. Itachi latched onto Sasuke’s throat and bit down. His lips molded to Sasuke’s skin. Naruto thought he heard the softest gasp come from Sasuke.

Sasuke looked up and through slightly hazy eyes he caught Naruto staring. They kept eye contact as Itachi softly lapped at Sasuke’s throat. Naruto took a deep breath, surprised at how clear the metallic scent of blood was to his senses. Sasuke closed his eyes and Naruto looked away, but the image stayed clearly in front of his inner eye.

 

\------

 

The next morning, Naruto got out of the bed on his own for the first time. Since he was chained up, Sasuke wasn’t that strict about where he moved anymore. He was there, sitting on the bed at his brother’s feet, watching Naruto intently. Naruto felt his gaze on him, but he wasn’t sure of whether he was being watched with suspicion or… with something else.

Naruto had been longing to see the sunlight ever since he was brought to this place of darkness and silence. He wanted to look outside, to ascertain that there really was a living, breathing outside world still. He went into the patch of sunlight that danced so tantalizingly in from the open window, but he felt a sizzling pain in his thigh and his arm, and recoiled.

"Most vampires can’t stand direct sunlight," Sasuke said. "I wouldn't try it if I were you."

Naruto backed into the shadows, clutching his burned arm. What… what was Sasuke talking about? He felt dizzy with fear… anger… disbelief… It couldn’t be… It couldn’t…

"You.... You turned me?!"

"Technically it was Itachi who turned you."

Naruto's anger rendered him speechless.

Sasuke just smirked.

"No ordinary human could hope to sustain Itachi. You would have to be turned to suffice. If there’s any consolation, you would have died otherwise."

"I would rather have died a thousand times than turn into one of you!" Naruto snarled.

Sasuke didn't even flinch.

"Please, don't be so dramatic. If it would please you, I can have you killed when you have done your job. But until then, you're property of my brother and you'll do as he says."

Naruto was shaking with anger. If he hadn’t been chained up, he would have made a run for the door, the window… anything. Then he realized… Sasuke was within his range. At this point, he didn’t care if the bastard would kill him for it. He would rather be dead anyway. With a speed and a force that startled even him, he threw himself at Sasuke. They landed heavily on the bed, Naruto on top, hands clutched tightly around Sasuke’s neck, squeezing with the intent of killing.

Sasuke’s cold hands wrapped around his wrists, but didn’t try to bend them away. He met Naruto’s eyes and held the gaze calmly.

Naruto realized there was no point in killing Sasuke. He was already dead. He released his grip on him, but didn’t get off him. He was breathing heavily, his body shaking with repressed rage and despair.

“Why?” He bit out. “Why me?”

"Itachi needs the blood of someone who's strong and I can’t sustain him alone."

“Aren’t there any other vampires around who could have done the job just as well? Why did you have to turn _me_?”

“None of the vampires in our clan were turned by Itachi, or me. Some are from a different clan, and the others are strays we have picked up over time. Their blood either isn’t strong enough, or vampires from other clans have tainted it. If he drank from them, it could make him weaker. But you… you are strong and freshly turned for this exact purpose.”

Sasuke’s gaze raked over Naruto with something akin to fascination. He lifted one hand and trailed the pad of his thumb down along Naruto’s cheekbone, down to his lower lip, where it lingered.

“You will do fine.”

 

\------

 

The next day, Naruto was moved to a new room. This one was larger than the attic where Itachi resided, but also darker. All the windows were nailed shut and there were no lamps or even any wax candles. There was a fireplace, but it didn’t look like it had been used for ages. A huge king sized bed dominated the room. It was a canopy bed with dusty curtains, just as Itachi’s bed, but larger and more elaborate.

Naruto couldn’t help but wonder why the vampire king was banished to the dusty, cramped attic while someone like Naruto got a room like this.

In this room, time passed without measure. Naruto hadn’t eaten since the raw meat he’d been served by the redheaded vampire, but he wasn’t hungry. He felt more and more weakened as time passed, but not hungry. He was chained to the wall, and was limited to walk only a few feet away from the bed. In the lonely darkness, he soon entered a state of mind where he stopped counting seconds and instead just listened… His sense of hearing seemed more acute than it had been before. Soon he could tell individual footfalls from each other as they passed in the staircase outside his room. He didn’t know to whom they belonged, though.

His sense of smell also increased. He started to feel a strange, acute hunger, almost alike desire, whenever he picked up a rich and sweet, but unfamiliar scent. The scent was so enticing; it beckoned to him. For hours and hours he lay there, his need steadily increasing but restrained as he was, he had no way of finding any relief. He ended up moving restlessly from one side of the bed to the other, tugging at his chain to test it, and grumbling to himself when it proved too sturdy to break.

After what seemed like weeks holed up in that room, he finally heard a familiar footfall approach his door. He was lying on the bed, half asleep, but was immediately alert at the prospect of a reprieve in his dull existence.

The door opened and Sasuke entered. He closed the door behind him, plunging the room back into darkness, but Naruto found that he could see Sasuke as clearly as though he was standing in bright daylight.

He looked positively breathtaking, but Naruto couldn't quite pinpoint what was different. He leaned onto his elbows, expectant. Sasuke was looking straight at him and Naruto had a feeling he'd come to see him for a special reason today. The scent coming off him was potent, mouthwatering. Naruto sat up straighter as Sasuke moved over to him, shedding his black jacket and unbuttoning the shirt underneath.

Naruto was too transfixed to take his eyes away. A small voice in the back of his head was asking questions. What was happening? What was Sasuke’s incentive? But the voice was quenched underneath the scorching hunger, desire, whatever it was, that threatened to consume him whole, body and mind.

Sasuke urged Naruto to move over, to give room to him. Naruto did so and turned to Sasuke, curious and expectant. Sasuke lay down and exposed his neck, much like he did when he fed his brother. The sight was mouthwatering, but Naruto couldn't quite believe Sasuke wanted him to do what it looked like he wanted him to do.

"Go ahead," Sasuke said. "Drink."

Despite the fact that the last piece of his rational mind was reeling at what he was about to do, Naruto leaned forward. His eyes zeroed in on the pale flesh of Sasuke's neck, where on a normal human a vein would have been pulsing. The fact that it didn't brought Naruto up short.

"Here," Sasuke said, showing with his fingers where Naruto was supposed to bite.

With a sense of surprise, Naruto felt a strange pressure in his gums, and touched upon the sharp point of his fangs with the tip of his tongue. He placed his mouth carefully on Sasuke’s neck, unsure how to go about it, but when he felt Sasuke's skin against his lips, an expectant thrum went through him. He could feel the blood surging underneath Sasuke's skin, even though it shouldn't be possible. His teeth sunk in without his consent, and the second the first trickle of blood flooded his mouth, he lost himself. He clung to Sasuke like he was the only solid thing in Naruto's world, and he very well might have been, because nothing else mattered to him anymore.

Later, he would remember how Sasuke urged him to sink in between his legs, and how he complied without a second thought, how sinking into Sasuke in more than one way made the sensation a thousand times stronger. But he had no idea he was doing it at the moment. Everything turned into just one, outdrawn sensation of completion, where nothing mattered but the scorching heat from Sasuke's blood and the supple way his body cradled Naruto.

When Naruto, spurred by his orgasm, finally broke free from Sasuke, Sasuke caught his lips with his, and kissed him as ferociously as Naruto had just fed of him. He licked up the blood that was now everywhere: on Naruto's cheeks and chin, on his chest, and on his hands.

Naruto was slowly winding down and at some point he slipped into sleep.

 

\------

 

When he woke up, he was wracked by disgust. It felt like he still had blood in his mouth and it made him want to puke, but he couldn't even if he'd stuck a finger down his throat. There was nothing left in him to puke up.

Once again, he was alone in the room. His body buzzed with a different desire now than before. The hunger was stilled, for now, but in turn he felt jittery, almost elated. He fought against the chain but it proved to be sturdy enough to hold him even when he used all the infinite power that seemed to surge through him.

At last, he had to admit defeat. He curled up in the middle of the bed. After hours upon hours, his body finally wound down and he fell asleep.

 


	2. Relapse

 

Not long after Sasuke’s last visit, he came back with a blonde woman in tow. The woman nonchalantly threw her long ponytail over her shoulder and rested one hand on her hip. She scrutinized Naruto with a critical gaze.

“Ino is here to take your measurements,” Sasuke said. “For new clothes.”

Naruto sat up in the bed. If he was getting clothes, that meant Sasuke was planning to take him somewhere. He remained meek and pliable as the female vampire measured every inch of his body with an air of disinterest.

Once she was done, she left without a word.

Naruto felt like he’d barely gotten a wink of sleep before Sasuke was back again. He threw a stack of clothes onto the foot of Naruto’s bed.

“Get dressed. We’re going out.”

The clothes were of supple leather and softly worn jeans fabric. Naruto found that his skin was more sensitive to fabric, and he was grateful for the quality and the softness of each garment. It felt nice to finally be wearing clothes again. He felt less like a prisoner once he’d put them on, despite the chain that still was tightly locked around his neck.

When Sasuke came back again, he told Naruto to sit down before he unlocked the chain. Naruto had put on his t-shirt and jacket over it, so it slid down his back inside his shirt as it was unfastened. The loss of weight felt heavenly. He was finally free again, and Sasuke was taking him somewhere… maybe he could find a way to escape.

He followed Sasuke out of the room and down one flight of stairs after the next. The building looked like it could have been a church at one point. Its rooms were vast and the roof was barely discernible high above him in the darkness. The whole place seemed to reside in a constant dusk. The only light sources were small cracks in the wall where stripes of sunlight drifted in.

“Doesn’t the sunlight hurt us?” Naruto asked.

“Those who are affected by it know to avoid it.”

As Sasuke said it, he walked right past a stripe of light. Naruto had to pass through it too. He hesitated. The pain from his last meeting with daylight was still fresh in his mind. He put one foot inside the stripe of light, and felt nothing. His clothes were protecting him. He hurried past it, covering his face with his arm.

Two other vampires were waiting for them down in front of a small, wooden door set in the massive stonewall. Naruto recognized one of them. It was the redhead who had offered him food. The other one he'd never seen before.

Naruto squinted at the redhead. There was something different about him, and suddenly Naruto realized what it was. Instead of being dressed in soft silk-robes, like he had when Naruto first met him, he was now wearing tight, dark red leather pants and a leather jacket.

The other vampire had spiky brown hair and a mischievous grin. His personality contrasted starkly against the vampires Naruto had met until then.

"You can't sustain Itachi if you don't harbor human blood," Sasuke said to Naruto. “Gaara and Kiba will take you out hunting.”

The brown haired vampire saluted. “I’m Kiba.” He measured Naruto with interest. “First time out, huh? Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”

“I’m not sure I-“ Naruto started, but Kiba didn’t seem to listen. He smacked Naruto’s back so hard he stumbled one step forward.

"Don’t worry, you’ll do okay. We'll go to a bar, we'll chat up some people, and then..." The mischievous grin was back full force. "We'll have some fun."

Naruto had a distinct feeling that they had very different associations with the word _fun_.

They waited a few minutes until the sun had set before they ventured outside. As Naruto had guessed, the building was a church. They made their way through an overgrown churchyard, winding their way between old, crumbled gravestones.

“Kinda fitting, right?” Kiba asked and nodded towards the gravestones. “We’re living up to human expectations.”

Naruto had never been very interested in literature on vampires, but he knew that it was a common theme in books and movies that the vampires couldn’t go into churches or, what was it, step onto holy ground?

“Do you keep up on, uh… human pop culture?” he asked.

“Sure,” Kiba said. “I get bored at times, ya know? It’s pretty fucking hilarious, all the weird stuff people think about us.”

“How long have you been… I mean…” Naruto looked nervously from Kiba to Gaara. Kiba just awaited his next words, while Gaara regarded him with carefully blank eyes. “You haven’t been vampires always… right?”

“Oh, right!” Kiba chuckled. “Naw, of course not. I’m not royalty. But it’s so long ago, I can’t even remember… man, it’s been a while since anyone asked me about my past. It’s not a happy story, that’s for sure.”

If it was so long since he turned into a vampire, then it figured why he so easily referred to other people as humans. Naruto still thought of himself as human. If he could only get away from these weirdoes, then he might be able to go back to his old life and live like normal again.   
It couldn’t be that difficult, right? He’d have to start living his life at night, though… but he could do that. Weren’t there stories about vampires who led normal lives? Fictional, surely, but still…

Kiba led them through a gate in the wall surrounding the churchyard, and suddenly they were in the middle of a deserted cobblestone street. They walked down the street for a while before they took off down a new one, winding through the more run-down parts of the city. Soon Naruto started realizing where they were. He had never noticed the old church before, but they weren’t so far from downtown Konoha. He had been there many times, when he went clubbing with his friends and…

He suddenly felt a bit queasy. Somehow, the memory of the massacre that he had barely been able to escape had been pushed to the back of his mind. Now it sprang back into the forefront of his mind and he found he was unable to quench the violent images.

“What’s wrong with him?” he heard Kiba say.

He realized he’d stopped in the middle of the street, clutching his head.

“He was present at the massacre,” Gaara said. He placed a hand on Naruto’s shoulder. “Probably returning memories.”

“Aw, shit,” Kiba said. “I feel ya, man. Been through the exact same shit. I was at Waterloo. That crap haunted me for years.”

“Good to know,” Naruto grumbled.

“I’m just saying I know how you feel. It’ll pass, eventually.”

Kiba patted his back and Naruto straightened up.

“What you need now, is something to strengthen you up a bit. Look here, I’ve got just the thing.”

He led Naruto down a narrow back alley, to a metal door that was barely visible underneath all the graffiti. He opened the door and Naruto stepped into a warm, crowded room where people sat crammed in around small wooden tables. The air was filled with cigarette smoke and the scent of liquor; that, and the thick, enticing scent that Naruto had started to get more familiar with. It was the same scent that had radiated off Sasuke that time when he visited Naruto...

Naruto swallowed thickly. It was the scent of blood; of living, breathing beings. Of something that he just a short while ago thought he could become again, but now… The scent thrummed through his body and made every dead cell that he consisted of feel alive again. He wanted to drink in that energy that the life around him exuded. He wanted to feel it again, just the way he’d done when he was alive.

He realized how ungrateful he’d been all his years of life. Not once had he praised the energy that kept him alive like he did now. All these ungrateful people… They didn’t know how lucky they were. Here they were sitting, mindlessly chattering, drinking, smoking, sedating themselves so they didn’t have to feel that they were alive.

Why?

For what purpose?

He startled when he felt a hand on his upper arm. It was only Gaara. He gave Naruto a look that was so full of understanding that Naruto felt his stomach twist. Then he gently guided Naruto towards the bar where Kiba was already waiting.

“Here.”

Kiba handed Naruto a small glass with some thick, dark liquid.

The bartender, a slender woman with her dark brown hair in two buns on her head, nodded towards Naruto before she moved on to a new customer.

Naruto knocked back the liquid like he saw Kiba and Gaara do. It tasted sweet and felt momentarily fulfilling, but it didn’t quench the hollow hunger he felt gnawing at the very center of his being.

“What is this?”

“Synthetic blood,” Kiba said. “It’s nothing like the real thing, but it helps soothe the hunger.”

“They just sell it in a regular bar?”

“This is no regular bar. It is owned by the Uchiha clan.”

That didn’t tell Naruto much, but Kiba seemed to take for granted that Naruto knew that name. He slapped Naruto’s shoulder and looked around the cramped, noisy room. The buzz from the chatter and the loud background music was almost too much for Naruto’s enhanced hearing.

“Lets find you a suitable companion for the night,” Kiba said and winked. He was off into the crowd before Naruto could protest. He followed him. Gaara remained by the bar but Naruto keenly felt his eyes on him, following every minute movement that he made. He suddenly got the distinct feeling that he was keeping an eye on him to ensure he didn’t make a scene, rather than out of a wish to protect him. When he looked over his shoulder, Gaara was looking in a different direction.

Kiba perused the crowd around him with and almost sardonic smile. Sometimes he caught the eye of a woman. She smiled at him and he smiled back, but then he kept moving. Naruto wasn’t sure what they were looking for. Finally, a bunch of guys moved from their seats at the back of the room, and Naruto and Kiba took their place.

“What now?” Naruto said.

Kiba grinned. “We wait.”

He fetched a cigarette and a lighter from his pocket. He didn’t offer Naruto one, but Naruto didn’t care. He didn’t want one. He had used to smoke, but now the mere sight of a cigarette made his stomach turn. The air was thick with cigarette smoke already, nearly concealing the scent of blood, and that was both a bad and a good thing. He felt on edge. The acrid smoke burned in his nose. He wanted to leave.

Two women came up to them. One leant close to Kiba, a cigarette between her lips. The other looked down at Naruto, flirtatious smile in place. She seemed to wait for him to make the first move. He got up from his chair and without a word to her, nor to Kiba, he turned and headed for the exit.

He couldn’t do this. It was too much. He needed to get out. Fresh air… That was all he needed.

"Naruto? Oh god… Naruto!"

Naruto froze. That voice was familiar. It was very, very familiar, but it might as well have been the ghostly whispers from a different life.

He felt arms around him, grabbing him, his name being sobbed, and then... Anger. The girl slapped him, and all Naruto could do was to stare at her, uncomprehending.

"I thought you were dead!" She sobbed. "Why didn't you tell me you were alright? Where have you been?"

She hugged him, and Naruto was automatically drawn towards the pulse point at her neck. In a matter of milliseconds, he snapped. He took her hand, his nails digging into her wrist where he felt her pulse, and dragged her towards the back of the bar, where the toilets and the backdoor were.

"Where are you going?" The girl asked. And then she got worried. "Naruto? What's up with you?"

Finally, realization began to dawn. But then it was to late. Before she could struggle, Naruto grabbed her and shoved her inside a bathroom, and slammed her against the door.

Now she was fighting in earnest, but Naruto hardly noticed. It was no problem for him to expose her neck, and bite down deeply. She screamed, so he clamped a hand over her mouth. When he finally felt sated, she'd gone completely limp in his arms.

"Sakura?" He asked. The haze cleared from his mind, and slowly comprehension started to dawn.

Sakura... His girlfriend... She'd been on the party too. He'd thought she was dead, like all the rest, and yet, when he ran into her, alive and breathing, he hadn't recognized her. In stead he had... He had...

He clutched her close, unable to look at her. Maybe, if he held her like this... Maybe she'd wrap her arms around him, like she always did when he started feeling like the world was crumbling around him... Maybe she'd say it was all right, that she was fine, that he'd done nothing wrong...

Maybe.

The toilet door moved, but Sakura’s limp body was in the way. Naruto realized that it would look bad if anyone walked in on him like this. But then he heard Kiba’s voice from outside.

“Naruto?”

He collected Sakura into his arms and moved to the side.

“Shit,” he heard Kiba say as he peered inside. He closed the door behind him, kneeled next to Naruto, and pressed his fingers to Sakura’s neck. “Shit,” he repeated.

“Get up.”

Naruto stood, still with Sakura cradled in his arms. Her head lolled over his shoulder like an obscure imitation of a life-sized doll.

“This is exactly what shouldn’t have happened. Never, _never_ , bite someone in a public place. It’s fucking insanity,” Kiba muttered.

He opened the toilet door and looked out into the hallway.

“All clear. Follow me.”

Naruto followed Kiba out into the narrow hallway and along it till they reached the backdoor. Kiba opened it for him and checked the back alley outside before motioning Naruto along.

Naruto felt strange. Stronger, somehow. His body was thrumming with energy. Where he before had felt hollow, he now felt full and complete. He was certain that he could do anything at this point. He could get away with anything. He could fight anyone.

He looked down at Sakura’s pale face. Her green eyes were wide open and her lips were forever parted in surprise. He could get her back. He knew there was a way. Sasuke… Sasuke would know.

He darted past Kiba, heading in the direction of the old, rundown church. Kiba yelled after him, but Naruto didn’t listen. He was flying across the ground. He felt stronger than he had ever been before. He leapt over the tall wall surrounding the churchyard and barged through the wooden side door. The church seemed empty but Naruto could sense Sasuke nearby. He didn’t know how, but he knew where he could find Sasuke. As though Sasuke cold sense him too, he met Naruto on the landing on the second floor.

Naruto stopped a few steps below him. He thrust Sakura out towards Sasuke.

"Turn her."

Sasuke didn't even spare Sakura a glance.

"She's dead," he said.

"You can turn her like you turned me."

"I didn't turn you. Itachi did."

"Then he can turn her too!"

"No. He can't."

"Please..." Naruto clutched Sakura to his chest. "If I ask him, I'm sure-"

"Naruto." Naruto's head snapped up at the mention of his own name. Somehow, hearing it from Sasuke's mouth made it sound like an order.

"She's dead," Sasuke said. "You killed her. You can't get her back."

Naruto stared at Sasuke, wavering between seething anger and the urge to crumble to his knees and sob.

"It's time you realize just what you have become," Sasuke said softly, and if Naruto didn't know better, he'd have thought he saw a glimmer of empathy in the depth of his eyes. But it was so brief it might as well have been a trick of the light.

“Leave her here. I’ll see to that someone takes care of her body.”

Naruto only clutched her closer.

Sasuke took a menacing step closer. His voice adapted a steely edge.

“Put her down.”

Naruto obeyed.

He sat her down on the stairs, gently, making sure she was lying comfortably, like she was sleeping.

“Good,” Sasuke said. “Now, come with me.”

He turned and set course for a room further down the hallway. Naruto gave Sakura one last, lingering look before he reluctantly followed Sasuke. Sasuke opened the door at the end of the hallway, and Naruto walked past him into a dark room. To his eyes, though, every detail stood out clearly. It was a narrow room filled with old furniture. On the other side of the room, against the wall, stood a four-poster bed in dark wood with red draperies. Along the walls stood various antique looking dressers and side tables as well as a huge, ancient looking trunk, and every available surface was filled with strange objects. On one of the dressers lay what looked like a papyrus incased in glass. It was filled with what even Naruto, with his limited knowledge of such things, recognized as Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Sasuke brushed past Naruto and picked something up from a casket that stood on top of another dresser.

“You’re too unbalanced to see Itachi right now,” Sasuke said. “Hold this.”

He thrust a polished stone on a chain into Naruto’s hand.

“I can’t do this,” Naruto bit out. “It’s too much. The impressions… the smell of blood… the – then energy, it’s… I can’t contain all of this…!”

“You’ll just have to deal with it,” Sasuke said. “I’ve heard that it’s worst the first time after you go back into civilization. After that, you get used to it.”

Naruto shook his head. “No. I’ll never get used to this. Never.”

He had been clutching the red stone in his hand while he talked, and it seemed that, without his conscious effort, he had calmed down a little. He opened his hand to look properly at the stone. It was a perfect sphere, blood red with a black center. It was warm to the touch.

“It’s a Sharingan,” Sasuke said and took the stone from Naruto. “It’s a powerful object that belongs to my clan. Go to Itachi now. He’ll help you take the edge off.”

Naruto found his way up to Itachi on his own. He only needed to follow the scent that he, unknowingly, had grown so familiar with. He realized as he climbed one flight of stairs after the next, that half of the church must somehow have been connected with an apartment building right next door. He could look out into the vast, domed room of the church as he walked up the stairs, but the doors that led to rooms on the side seemed to belong to a more modern kind of building, though, they too, if one were to judge by the elaborate handwork, were of an older date.

Itachi was sitting on the windowsill when Naruto entered his room. He stood and came over the second Naruto closed the door behind him. A gentle smile graced his pale lips. It didn’t quite reach his tired, hazy eyes.

“How did your first time go?”

Naruto bowed his head. He was unable to explain to Itachi what had happened. It felt unreal, like a dream.

Itachi placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to explain. I know that it must be tough.”

Naruto shook his head. He didn’t need to take pitying words from more vampires today.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said and headed for the bed. He took off his jacket and threw it on the floor. Then he lay down on his back, baring his throat.

Itachi moved soundlessly across the wooden, dusty floor and knelt on the bed next to Naruto.

“I wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t have to,” Itachi said. There was sadness in his voice. “Sasuke is unable to face reality, but the truth is that I’m dying. I don’t have much time left. I wish we hadn’t turned you, but Sasuke won’t listen to reason.”

“I… I thought vampires couldn’t die,” Naruto said.

Itachi shrugged. “We live longer… if you can even call out existence a life. But we’re not invulnerable. Eventually, we die too.”

He lay down halfway across Naruto and almost lovingly placed his mouth over what used to be Naruto’s pulse point. When his teeth slid in, Naruto felt nothing except a small stab of excitement.

He felt his strength and the wild energy seep out of him slowly until he became more and more relaxed. Eventually all his thoughts and memories stilled into a soft, quiet buzz. He knew something had happened that should warrant some sort of emotional reaction from him, but he was so tired and he felt so warm and comfortable that he didn’t fight it when his body eventually succumbed to sleep.

 

\-------

 

Time stopped mattering. Naruto wasn’t aware of when or where or why anymore. All he knew was the all-consuming hunger, the hunts, the blood, the life flowing through his veins, Itachi’s teeth piercing his skin… and Sasuke.

Even when Naruto wasn’t close to Sasuke, he could still feel him nearby. He could tell where he was; could pick out his smell after he’d fed easier than the others. He felt a hollow longing for him. Often, he thought about that time when Sasuke let him feed off him, and the sex that followed. Sometimes he couldn’t get it out of his head. The way Sasuke smelled, the way he felt… so warm and alive and pliant underneath him.

He wanted him almost as intensely as he needed to feed.

Sometimes, he thought about escaping. Often, the thought was just fleeting. It disintegrated in the matter of seconds when he was subjected to stronger needs and wants. After a while it became less important to leave. He couldn’t leave Sasuke anyway, there was no chance.

He might have had a former life… probably a mother and a father… maybe siblings? No… He didn’t think he’d had siblings. He must have used to live somewhere too… most probably an apartment… or maybe in a dorm room? Had he been a student? Did he have a job?

These questions occupied little of his time, but sometimes they came to the surface, especially after a night out when his energy level was high, and when he realized he couldn’t answer them he felt panic start to seep in.

“Hey, dude.” Kiba shook him. Naruto blinked and stared up at him. “Relapse, huh?”

“Yeah,” Naruto muttered.

He took in his surroundings. They had taken their hunt to a different turf this time. Usually, the vampires hunted far from the place they lived so that the disappearances would be less easy to trace back to them. That first time when Naruto joined them, they’d started off closer to home for his sake. As he got more secure they expanded their hunting ground.

Now they were in a deserted back alley at the opposite side of town, right next to an overfilled dumpster. Not exactly a pleasing place to feed, but a few minutes ago that hadn’t mattered to Naruto.

Ino was with them this time, and another woman from their clan named Tenten. She was the same woman who had worked in the bar that they visited on Naruto’s first night out.

The three others stood around Naruto. Tenten watched him with sympathy while Ino looked slightly annoyed. Between them lay the crumbled body of a young man. Naruto couldn’t even remember having met him, much less taking him there.

“You need to work on restraining yourself,” Kiba said. “We almost got caught because of you.”

He offered Naruto a hand and hauled him to his feet.

“Let’s get back home before someone finds us here.”

They hauled the body into the dumpster before they left.

Naruto felt his whole body thrum with the addictive pulse of life. He could hear, smell and feel everything so much stronger right after feeding. He didn’t want to go back to Itachi immediately. He knew that would just diminish his energy far too soon. He wanted to see Sasuke first. He’d hardly seen him at all lately. He wanted him.

“Hey, Naruto,” Kiba called. “Slow down.”

He grabbed Naruto by the elbow.

“You’re gathering attention,” he hissed.

Naruto looked around – really looked – for the first time, and realized that people in the street around them were staring at him. It had to be late at night, perhaps around two o’clock because the bars were still open, but there was still a huge crowd of people outside.

He realized he must have moved far too quickly for a normal person. He hadn’t been checking his strength. He felt a flare at annoyance that he had to check himself just to keep this horde of sheep in their happy bubbles. If he wanted, he could have killed each one of them easily. It wouldn’t even have made him break sweat. Well… If he had been able to sweat, that was.

Kiba grabbed his arm harder and rushed them away from the crowd. At some point, Tenten and Ino had left them, probably so that they would gather less attention. He and Kiba walked home in silence. Naruto took in all the scents that permeated the chilly night air. He could pinpoint every human in the closest vicinity, and could tell whether they were wrought up, calm, or excited. He wanted to go to them, wanted to partake in whatever they were experiencing, but something else had a stronger pull on him.

He sped up once they were out of view from humans. Kiba kept up with him.

“What’s the rush?” he asked, amused. “Are you so excited to feed our king?”

Naruto just grunted some half-answer.

Once they were back inside the quiet church, Naruto pretended to go up to Itachi, but changed course towards Sasuke’s room as soon as he was out of Kiba’s view. He didn’t knock before he entered. He felt his whole body shake with the excitement that coursed through him. He closed the door quietly behind him.

Sasuke sat on the bed with his legs folded underneath him, an old book in his lap. He was dressed in black jeans, as usual, and an open, white shirt. He looked up at Naruto without an ounce of surprise. He must have felt him approach, just as keenly as Naruto always felt where Sasuke was at all times.

They just stared at each other for a long moment, neither of them moving a muscle.

Then Sasuke’s expression changed into something softer, darker… His gaze flitted down along Naruto’s body, rested on the front of his pants where Naruto’s jeans were unable to hide his erection, and then slowly, slowly, moved up to Naruto’s face again.

He closed the book in his lap.

“Did you want anything?” he asked calmly.

Naruto realized that he hadn’t thought this through. He was breathing shallowly from excitement, but he had no idea how to approach Sasuke.

Sasuke leant backwards on the pillows behind him. His shirt slid open over his chest, exposing his flat stomach. Naruto was unable to take his eyes from that tantalizing stretch of alabaster skin.

Sasuke smirked. “Cat got your tongue? Aren’t you supposed to be with Itachi?”

The reminder put Naruto in motion. He was next to Sasuke in the span of a heartbeat.

“I needed to see you first.” He sat down on the bed next to Sasuke, ignoring the way Sasuke’s upper lip curled slightly at his boldness.

“And why would you need to see me?” Sasuke said.

“Sasuke…”

Sasuke looked up at him, his lips parted in a snarl. His fangs were fully extended, presumably in reaction to the scent of blood coming from Naruto. It only made Naruto more excited.

“How dare you presume you can use my given name?” He whispered.

Naruto was brought up short. “Uh… I’m sorry… Your Highness?”

He grimaced slightly. It felt stupid to use such titles.

Sasuke reached out so fast that Naruto didn’t have the slightest time to react, and grabbed Naruto’s chin viciously between his fingers.

“Do you want to fuck me?” He said in that deceptively soft voice of his that made exited shivers run down Naruto’s back. “Is that why you’re here, begging for attention like a docile puppy?”

Naruto swallowed. He knew he couldn’t lie, he had been too obvious, but saying yes would be a bad idea too, so he remained quiet.

In another violently quick move, Sasuke had Naruto on his back on the bed. His hand moved to his throat, clamping down so hard Naruto could barely breathe. Instinctively, his hands flew up to grasp at Sasuke’s hand, but his grip wouldn’t budge.

“Don’t worry,” Sasuke said. “I can’t actually choke you to death. Your body might think it’s dying, but you can live without air. It’s just an… instinctual reaction. It will still hurt, though.”

Naruto started fighting harder against Sasuke’s grip. He felt his lungs ache, desperate for the air that he was denied, and he tried to gasp down air without success. Sasuke just held him down harder.

“Someone did this to me once,” he said. “I thought I would finally die, but…”

He hesitated. Then he drew his hand away and sat back. Naruto hacked and coughed and clutched his sore throat.

“Mm… You’re still hard,” Sasuke said. He caressed Naruto’s stomach and cupped his cock.

“Fuck,” Naruto whispered.

What had become of him? Sasuke did nothing but toy with him, and still he was more desperate for him than ever. He felt Sasuke lean over him, felt his breath on his throat. He bared his neck, but Sasuke didn’t bite him.

“I can’t.” He sounded apologetic. “You’re supposed to feed Itachi.”

He drew back.

“Get up.”

Naruto felt a bit dizzy as he sat up since most of the blood in his body had vacated to places where it was more urgently needed. Sasuke scooted back on the bed and picked up his book.

“Go to Itachi,” he said, his attention on the book.

Naruto felt the strange need to do as Sasuke ordered again. He stood and left the room, glancing over his shoulder once, but Sasuke wasn’t even looking at him.

 


	3. Detached

Sasuke joined them on their next hunt. It was unusual. He didn’t hunt as often as the others, and when he did he was usually just joined by Gaara. This time he unexpectedly came down into the entryway by the backmost row of old, rotten pews, where Naruto, Kiba, a guy named Shino whom Naruto had never seen the face of, or heard speak for that matter, and Ino stood, ready to leave.

“I hope you’ve put on your best clothes,” Sasuke said.

“Where are we going?” Kiba said.

“You’ll see.”

“Should I get my stiletto’s?” Ino asked.

“No need, you look decent enough.”

If Ino had been any of the girls Naruto knew… or, had known once… then she would have been deeply insulted by such a half-assed comment. But Ino didn’t seem to care even in the slightest.

Suddenly, Naruto was hit by an unbidden image of a pretty girl with pink hair. His girlfriend… Sakura…

Naruto desperately tried to squash the memory and followed the others as they filed out of the small side door. He told himself to breathe calmly and clear his mind. It worked. The memories faded. He focused on the scents and sounds around him instead. The sound of a rat skittering past in the shadow of some trash cans, the overpowering stench of decaying waste, the laughter and chatter of drunk people smoking outside of bars and restaurants, and underneath it all, the tantalizing pulse of life glimmering like a forgotten treasure.

He could already feel his fangs press on his gums.

Sasuke led them on a winding path through the city until they reached a tall, extravagant building with the words The Leaf Grand Hotel in huge letters above the main doors. Sasuke barely inclined his head to the doormen, who watched their group with suspicious glances. Naruto understood why Sasuke had mentioned their clothes. This place was high-end. Everything looked expensive, from the golden chandelier to the ornate furniture to the huge framed paintings on the wall.

Sasuke walked right up to one of the receptionists, a woman in a spotless red suit, and put on his most charming smile. Naruto huddled with the others by the door. The smell of this place was overpowering. A fog of perfume, sweat and desire thickened around him like it was threatening to choke him. The others seemed unaffected, though. Kiba looked bored. He took a cigarette from his pocket and put it to his lips, but was strictly bid to put it away by one of the doormen. He glared coldly at the man, but put the cigarette back in its packet.

Ino was jiggling her foot and chewing on the tip of her ponytail while she glowered at the beautifully dressed women that passed by. Every woman seemed attired in an evening dress here, while Ino was wearing a miniskirt and a leather jacket.

“Pretentious bitches,” she muttered under her breath as a brunette in an open-backed red dress measured her from head to toe with a smirk playing at her lips. “Just wait… I might seek you out specifically if you don’t watch it.”

Shino stood with his hands in his pockets and his hood pulled down over his eyes. The lower part of his face was hidden behind the high collar of his jacket. He didn’t say a word. Naruto wasn’t entirely sure how aware he actually was of his surroundings.

Sasuke motioned to them and they followed him to the elevators.

“Where are we going?” Naruto asked.

“We’re crashing some rich brat’s party,” Ino said.

Kiba shoved away a man and a woman who tried to ride the elevator with them. As the doors shut in their faces, he turned to Naruto. “Nothing like pulling the Uchiha name so that we can take some upper class people down a notch.”

“Or take them out entirely,” Ino said.

Shino leant against the mirrored wall of the elevator, shoulders hunched, while Sasuke looked like his mind was somewhere else entirely, his eyes staring straight ahead into thin air.

The elevator opened into what looked like the hallway to a giant apartment rather than to a hotel suite. Sasuke led the way. They gathered a lot of attention once they entered the room. Sasuke walked in first, looking nothing less but regal even in worn jeans and a black blazer over a black shirt. Naruto burrowed his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and ducked his head to avoid all the open stares at his threadbare jeans and untied sneakers. Kiba seemed to not give a shit that everyone were measuring them. He was wearing his usual cocky smirk. His eyes were already scanning the crowd for potential victims.

Ino and Shino gathered, if possible, even more incredulous looks for two very different reasons: one for lack of clothes and the other for excess of clothes. They seemed to not care much, though. Ino looked as bored as ever.

“Their blood is probably full of drugs,” Naruto heard her mutter to Shino. “I don’t see why Sasuke bothers.”

Naruto followed Kiba and Sasuke over to the bar, where he pretended to find great interest in a glass of Jack and coke while he in reality tried to single out a scent that interested him. He had learnt to fine-tune his senses to a point where he could pinpoint the blood type of the various people in his vicinity.

He had realized that there were some people whose blood nearly beckoned to him, and others that he’d rather stay away from. Sometimes it was due to some illness or something the people had consumed that didn’t agree with Naruto, but other times he got the feeling that it was just preference.

At the moment, no one had a scent that immediately drew his attention, so he let his gaze wander, entertaining himself with watching these fickle humans flirt and lie and scheme while they smiled into each others faces. Their scents and subtle body language told Naruto so much more than their faces and mouths did.

He watched with detached interest as a woman and a man next to him pretended to be interested in what the other was saying, laughing flirtingly at the right places and trying to speak with their eyes rather than their mouths, while their bodies radiated pure lust.

Naruto turned away. His gaze landed on Sasuke, who was talking with the bartender, slowly circling the rim of his glass of martini with one slender finger. He abruptly looked away from him.

He suddenly felt the hunger more prominently than a minute ago. He should probably just get it over with. Find someone half-appealing and just get the fuck away from there. His gaze landed on a beautiful dark-haired woman in a lilac dress. She stood out from the people around her, but Naruto couldn’t quite put his finger on why. She was beautiful, yes, but there was something more about her… Something about her eyes. They were less vacant than those of the humans around her. She met Naruto’s gaze directly and without blinking or smiling. They were a peculiar color; almost milky in their lightness. And then he realized… She had no pupils.

She looked away from him and, as thought beckoning someone over, curled her pointer finger. A man suddenly appeared right next to her. Naruto could have sworn that he wasn’t there a second ago. He was tall and just as beautiful as the woman. His long, mahogany hair flowed over his shoulders and down his back, and his eyes were the same, strangely light color.

Siblings?

The woman looked at him again, and this time a small smile curled her lips.

Naruto involuntarily moved over to her. There was something about her that made him vary, but she seemed to want him to come over.

“Hello,” she said when he came closer to her. Her voice was soft and subdued, but with his enchanted hearing, Naruto heard her perfectly well even over the chatter around them.

“I’m Hinata. You must be new?”

Naruto wasn’t entirely sure what she meant with ‘new’, so he just nodded warily.

“I’m Naruto,” he said.

“This is my cousin, Neji,” she said.

Naruto looked at Neji, who barely inclined his chin in greeting.

“I see you’re here with Uchiha,” Hinata said.

Naruto looked over his shoulder, following her gaze. Sasuke was still talking to the bartender. Suddenly, something clicked in his mind. Sasuke’s last name had to be Uchiha. That’s why Kiba said the Uchiha’s owned that bar they’d been to the first time he hunted. He wondered how much power his clan had if they owned such central properties and only mentioning his name could get him into a place like this.

“But he doesn’t seem too concerned about you.” She gave Naruto a sweet smile. “Let me show you around.”

She offered him her elbow, which he, after an awkward moment of hesitation, realized that he was supposed to take. He was surprised by how lacking of heat her skin was. To Naruto, she felt normal, but he knew that humans usually felt scorching hot to the touch. Come to think of it… he’d been too busy watching her to notice how she smelled, but now he realized that she had no scent. She had to be a vampire too.

“We don’t usually see members of the Uchiha clan hanging around up here,” she said. “What brought you here tonight?”

“I’m not sure,” Naruto said. “It was Sasuke’s idea.”

She smiled sweetly. “Of course it was.”

They wound their way between groups of people who talked excitedly, their drunk voices hammering on Naruto’s eardrums.

“Tedious, isn’t it?” Hinata said.

“Hm…?”

“Life.” She stopped and looked out over the mass of people around them. “It’s just rinse and repeat, again and again and again in a tedious circle. It never stops, never halts, never tires. I’ve seen it all a thousand times… a million times. It’s always the same. The masks. The games. The charade.”

Her voice was strangely void of emotion as she spoke.

“It’s almost like they’re just waiting to be drained. Like they’re here just for us to feed off their useless bodies. Just think about it. Why do they get to have all the pleasure of living, while we, ageless and wise beyond their wildest dreams, just have to leech off them? We can only live through them.”

She looked up at Naruto. “Doesn’t it seem unfair?”

Naruto nodded.

She smiled, though the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, and caressed Naruto’s cheek. “Who turned you?”

Naruto hesitated. It felt… personal to give away that kind of information.

“Never mind,” she said. “Little fledgling.” She pressed his hand. “Pray that the Uchiha prince takes good care of you.”

And then she slipped off into the crowd and was gone between one blink of the eye and the next.

After meeting her, Naruto felt a little out of sorts. He completely forgot why he was actually there until Kiba found him and asked him how he was doing.

“Who are they?” He asked, and nodded towards Neji and Hinata, who were standing with their heads close together; two islands of serenity in an ocean of bustling humans.

“The Hyuuga’s,” Kiba said with slight distaste. “Of course they had to be here. Has Sasuke seen them yet?”

“I don’t know…”

“Fuck…” Kiba muttered. “Wouldn’t surprise me if he took us here just to stir up shit. I remember people told us the Uchiha’s were crazy, but Itachi’s been such a great leader so I thought the rumors were just bullshit…” He nodded towards Sasuke, who was making his way towards them. “He makes me think the rumors were true after all.”

“I can hear what you’re saying,” Sasuke said as he reached them.

Kiba shrugged. “What’re you gonna do? Lop my head off?”

“That probably wouldn’t stop that incessant mouth of yours anyway,” Sasuke said.

“Look over there,” Kiba said and nodded towards Hinata and Neji.

The two looked up at them the same second Sasuke turned towards them. He gave them a curt smile, which only Hinata returned.

“I don’t think they’re too thrilled to see me,” he said. It didn’t sound like that affected him in the least.

“We’re not on their turf, so they can’t complain,” Ino, who had appeared right next to Naruto, said.

“So… Found anyone interesting?” Kiba said.

Ino shook her head. Naruto shrugged.

“Me neither,” Kiba said. “They all smell like bland wine covered over with expensive perfume.” He rubbed his nose. “That shit is so heavy in the air, it burns inside my nose.”

“I’ve found someone,” Sasuke said. “Where’s Shino?”

They tried to get a glimpse of him, but there was no use trying to find him in the overfilled room.

“Uchiha,” a low, cool voice said behind them. They turned towards Neji, who had approached them as smoothly as a shadow through the throng. “What are you doing here?”

“Just trying something new for a change.”

“You could at least pretend that you take it seriously, then,” Hinata said as she appeared next to her cousin. “Your bunch of riffraff is drawing too much attention.”  
Ino glared at her, but kept her mouth tightly shut.

“We were just about to leave,” Sasuke said with an acidic smile. “So don’t worry. We won’t be drawing more attention and you can continue mingling with this brain-dead flock like you’re so good at.”

He was about to brush past her, but Hinata grabbed his arm too quickly for even Naruto’s keen eyes to catch the movement.

“Don’t you dare bring any more attention to yourselves,” she said so softly that only a vampire would be able to hear the words over the chortle around them. Her girlish voice had adapted an edge of steel. “Walk calmly away and take your hunt someplace else.”

Naruto half expected Sasuke to laugh her off, but once she released him he set course for the main door and motioned for Naruto and the others to follow. Kiba went to find Shino. While he was gone they waited in silence. Only when they were all inside the elevator and on their way down did someone break the silence.

“Damn Hyuuga bitch,” Kiba muttered. “Acting like she owns the place.”

“She’s right, though,” Sasuke said. “We gathered too much attention.”

No one commented on that. It was true. They wouldn’t have been more conspicuous had they walked around with a blinking sign over their heads.

“What do we do now?” Kiba asked once they were outside on the street again.

Sasuke stood quietly for a while. Naruto had a feeling he was feeling out the area with his senses. Then he started walking eastwards and the others followed. A biting wind had set in, but it hardly bothered them. Naruto found he missed it. Maybe he was unable to properly feel the chill, but that meant he didn’t feel warmth so keenly either. Only after he’d just fed could he once again sense that kind of things more strongly, things that he earlier had taken for granted. Now they were like treasured treats that he longed for with his entire being, sometimes so strongly that even the hunger that gnawed at his insides seemed like a trifle thing.

He watched Sasuke’s back as he walked in front of him and wished that he could feel his scent. He couldn’t. Right now, Sasuke didn’t have one. To a predator, they would be invisible. To a prey, they were lethal.

Sasuke led them to the old docks where a lot of the coolest clubs were situated. People were milling around, drunk, disoriented, and such an easy prey that it wasn’t even funny. Kiba disappeared into the throng and reappeared shortly after with two women, one at each elbow.

“Where’s this friend you wanted us to meet?” One of them said.

“Wait,” the other said. “I’m not going in there.”

She looked at the dark alley where Naruto and the others stood hidden.

“I promise, you’re gonna like this,” Kiba said. He whistled sharply, as though he was calling on a dog. “Hey, Sasuke.”

Sasuke sighed. “Fucker,” he muttered, but then he walked out into the light from a street light nearby.

The two women stared at him and immediately their demeanor changed from suspicious to eager.

“You didn’t lie when you said he was handsome,” one of the women said.

The other pouted, visibly upset that she had to stick with Kiba while her friend walked over to Sasuke.

“Hi there,” the woman said to Sasuke, her voice turning sultry. “Strange place to pick up girls.”

Kiba had come closer with his woman, who was complaining about the chill in the air and suggesting they should go over to the bar that they could see farther down on the dock. Sasuke didn’t waste time talking to the woman who now was commenting that he had to be the tall, dark, quiet type.

He grabbed her by the neck and pulled her with him into the dark alleyway. Kiba had slapped a hand over the mouth of the other woman and dragged her too easily with him straight into the arms of his friends.

Sasuke offered the woman that he had a steel grip on the neck of to Naruto as though she was nothing but a piece of meat. Naruto was surprised that Sasuke didn’t claim the first bite, but he hardly cared as long as he got to still his own hunger. He placed a hand over the woman’s mouth and looked her into the eyes. She had gone stiff from fear. Her eyes were huge as saucers.

“It’s okay,” Naruto said and gave her what he had meant to be a calming smile. Then he realized that his fangs must have been showing because she just looked even more terrified.

“Just get it over and done with,” Sasuke said.

“I’ve got this,” Naruto snapped.

He pulled her closer, but she resisted. Her body went stiff as a board in his arms and then she started struggling and kicking. She bit Naruto’s hand but it had hardly any effect. He just pressed his hand further into her mouth.

“Stop struggling and this will be over in a second,” he bit out.

She was hardly in a position to take his advice.

On his other hunts Kiba had taken the first bite, so when it was Naruto’s turn it had been much simpler. Now he struggled with getting access to her neck because she was trashing so badly.

Sasuke lost his patience. He grabbed the woman’s hair and twisted her neck to the side, baring it for Naruto. Naruto grabbed her arms and trapped them against her body as he leant in and clumsily sank his teeth into the soft skin over her pulse point. The warm blood flooded his mouth immediately and he swallowed it greedily. As he sucked more and more blood from the woman’s body, she got weaker and weaker. 

At last, Sasuke pulled her away from him. When Naruto protested, baring his bloodied fangs in a snarl, Sasuke just stared him down. Naruto couldn’t hold the gaze for long. He looked away, giving Sasuke the woman. He leant over her – they were kneeling on the ground now since her legs gave out at some point – and pressed his mouth gently, almost lovingly to her exposed neck. Naruto heard a soft sob and a shaky moan come from the nearly comatose woman. Finally, her body relaxed, and as Sasuke lapped up all the blood that her tired body could offer him, she went completely lax.

Naruto dried his mouth and chin on his sleeve while he watched Sasuke intently. He almost felt jealous at the gentle way Sasuke cradled the unconscious woman. By the time Sasuke was done with her, she was long since dead. Her skin was sickeningly pallid, void of the plushness and glow of a living being. Naruto felt nothing at seeing her dead body.

She had just been food.

But Sasuke sat with the woman draped over his lap for a while longer after he’d stopped feeding and had wiped away a stray drop from his chin. He sat with his head bowed and his eyes closed for a long moment before he finally got up and placed the woman gently on the ground, like he was putting her to rest.

Now that the desperate haze of hunger finally had left Naruto, he felt sated and warm. He was sitting on the concrete, his back resting against the side of a dumpster. The others were scattered around the small alleyway in much the same fashion, satisfied and relaxed.

“Not exactly a meal fitting for a prince,” Ino said softly. “But I guess it does the trick.”

“It used to be different,” Kiba said. “We didn’t have to feed next to dumpsters back in the days.”

“What happened?” Naruto asked.

Kiba shrugged. “Evolution, I guess. Vampires used to have a much stronger position in this world a few hundred years ago. We had power, lots of it, and no one went after us or dared to oppose us. They were too scared of us for that. But now… You can’t take a stroll down the street without watching your step.”

“But…” Naruto hesitated. “What about the… the massacre…” He rubbed the spot on his neck where Sasuke had bit him the first time. “That was pretty risky.”

Kiba was suddenly giving Naruto a very intent look.

Naruto could feel Ino’s and even Shino’s eyes on him.

“That…” Kiba said. “It was a special occasion…” He glanced briefly over at Sasuke.

“It was a revenge mission.” Sasuke said without looking at any of them. He leant back against the brick wall behind him. “They pushed us into it. There is a line at which we have to stop hiding and start fighting. We hit them where it would hurt the most.” His upper lip curled, baring his teeth in a scornful imitation of a smile. “It was risky, but it was satisfying to see how the government panicked. How we sent them reeling. Despite all the time they’ve had to try and understand us, they still have no idea how to deal with us.”

“How many survived that day?” Naruto whispered.

Sasuke shrugged. “I don’t know, Naruto, and I honestly don’t care. Not enough to give anyone too much information about us, at least.”

Naruto bowed his head.

“Don’t pretend to care about those nameless friends of yours,” Sasuke said coldly. “That was a different life. It wasn’t you.”

“How can you tell me to stop _remembering_?” Naruto spat. “Those feelings are still real.”

“And yet, they aren’t.”

Sasuke stood and was over by Naruto’s side in the blink of an eye. Naruto reacted quickly and stood, but not quickly enough to stop Sasuke from grabbing his chin in an iron hold.

“Do you feel this?” He said as his fingers dug into Naruto’s chin with a strength that should have been enough to bruise. At this point, being well fed and feeling almost human again, Naruto could feel the pressure on skin and muscles, the heat from Sasuke’s body, and the sting of nails digging into his skin. But all those things seemed like minor inconveniences. He grabbed hold of Sasuke’s arm and squeezed hard. Maybe he’d leave bruises there for all of a couple of hours. Then they would be gone as though they’d never been there in the first place, leaving Sasuke’s skin almost greyish pale as the blood that now gave an imitation of life was absorbed by the ever-consuming hunger that was all his body consisted of.

Naruto knew exactly what Sasuke meant.

The memories, feelings, fears and doubts that before had seemed to consume his every waking hour, his every cell, now seemed like a distant memory; hazy and vague, present but still out of reach, like a mirage that teased him with it’s intangibility.

He had never thought he’d long for the confusing feelings and fears of his humanity. In the end, they were nothing in the face of the gaping emptiness that his entire existence consisted of now.

Sasuke released Naruto and turned his back to him as thought Naruto’s continued silence was answer enough to his question.

“We need to search farther for prey again,” he said to the others. “We’re starting to gather attention with the bodies that you strew so hazardously around.”

Kiba and Ino exchanged ashamed glances.

“Dispose of these two,” Sasuke said. “Naruto… Come with me.”

Naruto trailed after Sasuke in silence all the way back to the old church. He could feel a change in Sasuke’s scent. It curled around him, enticingly, beckoning him closer. Naruto felt his whole body quiver with excitement.

Sasuke led him up the endless stairs, until he took off down the hall towards his own room. Naruto stopped, hesitating. He wasn’t sure if Sasuke had meant for him to follow him all the way in there. 

Sasuke stopped in the open doorway to his room.

“Are you coming?”

Naruto didn’t need to be asked twice.

He hurried after him and closed the door behind him, plunging them into complete darkness for a moment before their eyes adjusted. He saw Sasuke slip off his blazer and drape it over the back of a chair, before he started unbuttoning his shirt. He looked up at Naruto and threw a pointed look at Naruto’s still very clothed body.

Naruto threw his jacket aside and tugged his t-shirt over his head. He fumbled with his jeans and tugged them off as well. Now Sasuke looked amused. His shirt slithered softly off his shoulders. His eyes were fixed on the tent in Naruto’s boxers.

Then he turned away and walked over to the bed, where he calmly unzipped his jeans and slipped them off. Naruto took off his boxers and kicked them aside. After so long it almost felt strange to wrap his fingers around his warm and achingly hard cock. It felt so… human.

Sasuke was watching him while he slid off his black briefs. Then he sat down on the bed and leant back against the pillows, one leg bent so that Naruto could see right in between his legs. He was next to Sasuke so fast that he wasn’t even aware of how he got there. He climbed onto the bed, scooted in between Sasuke’s legs, eyes fixed on his hard cock and then on his eyes. Sasuke’s eyelids were lowered slightly, making his dark eyes glint dangerously under the shadow of his lashes.

Naruto wanted to fuck him like he’d done that night when he fed off him, and he was pretty sure Sasuke wanted that too. His body was thrumming with life, and so was Sasuke’s. The need to be one with Sasuke was so overpowering that he was shaking. He touched him, caressed his sides, and felt an almost electric jolt of pleasure run through his otherwise so cold and lifeless body. Sasuke spread his legs around Naruto’s hips. His hand came back from underneath his pillow with a small bottle.

He drizzled the lube over his own fingers and slid them down between his legs, in between his ass cheeks. Naruto watched as though transfixed as Sasuke quickly loosened himself just enough to make penetration easier. Naruto adjusted his cock and pushed inside of Sasuke the second his fingers were out of the way. At first Sasuke was very tight. Naruto thrust shallowly until he felt Sasuke loosen and mold around him, and then he was suddenly welcomed inside of him, nearly sucked in. He thrust harder, and figured it was the right thing to do when Sasuke spread his legs wider in response. He wrapped his arms around Naruto to bring them closer. Naruto thrust harder and harder, and sank deeper and deeper into Sasuke.

He gasped at this new sensation. He was approaching an orgasm that was promising to be stronger than any he could recall having had, ever, and he wanted to lose himself in it. He let go of all control, and Sasuke accepted all he had to give without protest. He was baring his throat to Naruto, whether knowingly or not, Naruto did not know, but as his release overcame him, he found biting Sasuke was impossible to resist. It was an instinct too deeply ingrained in him to control. When he finally came down, he released Sasuke's throat and collapsed unceremoniously on top of him. His body and mind was buzzing with euphoria, which was something he hadn't felt since...since he was still human. Sasuke was motionless underneath him, but when Naruto managed to collect himself enough to check on him, he saw that he was content and relaxed.

Naruto pulled out of him and sunk to the side.

“I didn’t mean to bite you,” he said. The taste of blood was still lingering in his mouth. It had tasted different when coming from Sasuke… sweeter, richer.

“It’s okay,” Sasuke murmured. “More for Itachi.”

Naruto had forgotten that he was supposed to feed Itachi. He didn’t want to leave Sasuke, not just yet. It was so nice to lie close to him now that both their bodies were so warm and responsive. He was pretty sure he could go for another round soon.

He watched Sasuke’s face. His eyes were closed. He looked about to fall asleep. His breathing evened out. Naruto was surprised that he allowed his guard to lower while Naruto was still there, so close.

Naruto wanted to kiss him.

He lifted his hand and placed it, carefully, on Sasuke’s shoulder. When that didn’t make Sasuke react, he got a little bolder. He moved his hand to Sasuke’s cheek and leant in, placing his lips gently over Sasuke’s. They were warm, just as he’d imagined.

Then they moved.

“Don’t forget your place,” Sasuke said.

Naruto pulled away. Sasuke’s eyes were still closed.

“Leave me,” he said and nuzzled into his pillow.

Naruto got out of the bed, gathered his clothes, and after one last, long look at Sasuke’s sleeping figure under the sheets, he let the door click shut behind him.

 


	4. Fledgling

Naruto wasn’t entirely sure when he’d stopped planning to escape from the Uchiha clan. It occurred to him one night that at one point he’d seriously thought of doing it. That seemed like a lifetime ago now. He wasn’t a prisoner anymore. Sasuke didn’t keep an eye on him constantly, or chained him up. Naruto was free to do as he pleased.

Or, so it seemed. There was something strange, though, about that demanding tone of voice that Sasuke sometimes got that made Naruto feel meek and willing to do whatever he was ordered to. He never thought much about it as it happened, but afterwards he pondered it and started wondering if it wasn’t really by his own choice that he gave in to Sasuke so easily.

Did Sasuke have some sort of invisible power over him?

It sounded weird. Sasuke didn’t seem to have that kind of power over the other vampires. They had more freedom and seemed to stay because they wanted to; because this was their home. Naruto, on the other hand, didn’t have a tight bond to the clan yet, and although he didn’t feel like a prisoner anymore, he was still expected to feed Itachi every so often. In other words, Sasuke couldn’t afford for him to leave. He needed him, and he had found a way of keeping him against his will while making it feel like he actually wanted it.

All this was strange and confusing. Time still blurred together into a dark fog for Naruto. Weeks could pass without his notice, without him putting a foot outside of his room. He spent a lot of time sleeping when he wasn’t hunting. Kiba and the others tried to get him to join them in the recreation room downstairs more often, to chat with them and laugh over stupid vampire movies or whatever they did in their free time, but Naruto hardly felt like pretending to be happy when in reality he felt confused and overwhelmed and abandoned.

He tried to remember things about his past. Sometimes small tidbits could come to him as easily as anything when he least expected it, but when he actively tried to remember, everything became blurry. For some reason, he remembered pretty well useless details like the small pendant Sakura wore when they left for the party at that fateful night, or some bullshit thing his friend said as they left their dorm room… They had a dorm room… They had been sharing it…

Naruto sat upright in his bed. They had attended Konoha College of… of… The memory slipped away from him again. He slumped back on the bed. He nearly had it this time. Slowly, he succumbed to restless sleep.

He was awakened by Kiba.

“Hey!”

Naruto rubbed his aching head and sat up. He felt like shit. He had no idea for how long he’d been lying on his bed this time, pondering in the darkness until he didn’t know up from down.

“We’re going out hunting. Man, I haven’t seen you at all for the two last weeks. I meant to ask you if you wanted to join us at the bar, for the human sort of drinking, but you were completely out of it. Do you even remember that I dropped by?”

Naruto shook his head. “No… When was that?” 

“A week ago, maybe.”

Kiba gave Naruto a look that made him feel transparent. He slipped out of bed and searched for his clothes to have something else to do but being subjected to Kiba’s pity or whatever else he was feeling.

“Listen…” Kiba said. “It’s always difficult in the beginning. We’ve all been through it. Everything is confusing and weird and you don’t know who you are anymore…”

Naruto fought his way out of his t-shirt and gave Kiba a surprised look. Kiba was describing his feelings exactly.

“Don’t look so surprised,” Kiba said. “It might be two hundred years since I died, but there’s no way I’m ever forgetting how shitty it was.”

“Who turned you?” Naruto asked, letting curiosity get the best of him.

Kiba shrugged. “Some random vamp prowling the battleground, looking for new henchmen. He died a long time ago, killed by vampire hunters.”

“Those really exist?”

“Yeah, but probably not in the way you’re thinking,” Kiba said with an amused tilt to his mouth. “They don’t walk around with holy water and wooden stakes, at least.”

“I was thinking more… silver bullets or… No, that’s werewolves. Hey, do they exist?”

Kiba rolled his eyes. “You bet they do,” he bit out.

“Not personal friends of you, I guess?”

Kiba chuckled. “I ran into a few once in the woods somewhere in east Europe. They’re not what they’re presumed to be. For the most part, they’re just ordinary people living their ordinary lives as well as they can, keeping out of government eyes so that they don’t get put down on the spot. But when they are rounded up and used in war… damn, you don’t want to face that.”

Kiba walked to the door once Naruto was done getting dressed. The sun had set so the church was plunged into complete darkness.

“So… About those vampire hunters…”

Kiba turned and shushed him. “Not so loud. Not everyone is comfortable hearing about them.”

Naruto lowered his voice. “But are they something we should look out for?”

“Yeah, always. That’s why we hide in abandoned buildings and try to gather as little attention as possible when hunting.”

“But… that makes that massacre even more risky!”

“Yeah, but they still don’t know where we live,” Kiba said with a cheeky grin. He was leading Naruto to the recreation room at the first floor rather than to the usual small side door.

“But still, isn’t it just a matter of time before they find out? I mean, wouldn’t they be searching every abandoned building they can find?”

“Yeah, the ones they are allowed into. This one’s protected by the Uchiha clan name. You see…” Kiba stopped and Naruto did too. “The Uchiha clan comes from old money. That money gave them a lot of power, and a lot of land.”

“Then… Why aren’t we living in, like, a high end skyscraper or something?”

Kiba grimaced. “Yeah, sure. Imagine all those windows… all that sunlight. The ideal place would be somewhere far from people, but…” Kiba shrugged. “That also means far from a reliable food source. The wealth that we once had is nothing but scraps by now, though, so the skyscraper was out of the question anyway. The most valuable things we own is property, and we plan on using that to our advantage so that we can stay hidden for a while longer.”

He walked on into a room where Naruto had never set his foot before. He just knew that the other vampires used to gather there. In addition to Ino, Tenten, Shino and Gaara, there was a new man there. He had an unruly shock of white hair and a long scar over one eye. In addition, he wore a mask over the lower part of his face. Naruto drew in a deep breath, taking in the man’s scent. He was human, but like the other humans in the clan, there was something about his scent that put Naruto off.

“Ah, so you’re the new addition,” the man said with a nod of greeting towards Naruto. “I’m Hatake Kakashi, in charge of the resident human population and of the Uchiha clans funds.”

“Naruto,” Naruto grunted.

“The king wishes for me to accompany you to the Sound village.”

“Why are we going there?” Naruto asked. The sound village was lying not too far from Konoha, maybe a few hours ride with the train. Naruto had never been there.

“We need to broaden our hunting grounds,” Kiba said. “Take the search light off this area for a while. We have a small section of our clan there, so we’re going to see them.”

Kakashi walked towards the door and the vampires got up and followed him. He seemed to have a certain power there.

They really did use the train. Mindful not to catch too much attention, they traveled in pairs. Kakashi immediately grabbed Naruto’s arm and pulled him with him to the ticket machine. He purchased two tickets and squeezed one into Naruto’s hand.

“I know you’re new,” Kakashi said under his breath as they made their way to their train. “But could you stop ogling anyone who walks past?”

Naruto hadn’t realized that he was staring hungrily at people passing by him. He shook out of it and tried to focus on the matter at hand, but it was proving difficult. As they got on the train, a woman met them in the doorway. She scampered backwards when Naruto looked at her, as though she could feel the pure bloodlust radiating from him. Kakashi grabbed Naruto’s shoulder in a surprisingly firm grip, and steered him past the woman. He pushed him down into a window seat, and placed himself between Naruto and the aisle between the seats.

“Drink some of this,” he said and offered Naruto an anonymous flask.

“What is it?”

“Synthetic blood. I thought it was a good idea to bring it since we were bringing a hungry fledgling on a train. Turns out I was right.”

Naruto sipped from the flask. It soothed his hunger a little.

“Not too much,” Kakashi said. “You’ll get sick.”

He took the flask back and put the cork back on. The train set in motion. Kiba and the others were somewhere else in the train. Naruto wondered how they were faring. How could one ever get used to being trapped in confinement with hundreds of humans that smelled divine, the thrum of life pulsing with each and every heartbeat, and not go half-mad?

“Itachi wanted me to talk to you,” Kakashi said. “To hear how you’re doing. I understand that it must be confusing to be thrown into this world so brutally - ”

“How was it for you?” Naruto interrupted. “When you discovered all this?”

Kakashi just shook his head. His expression was impossible to tell thanks to the mask he was wearing even now. People were giving him more weird looks than they were giving Naruto.

“That was… It was a long time ago. There were different times back then. Completely different. But I’m not here to talk about myself.” He looked around as if to check if anyone was listening to them. The cart was nearly empty. A few seats ahead of them sat a woman with headphones. Across from them sat a man reading a book, and some seats back they could hear a lively conversation between a group of friends.

Kakashi lowered his voice.

“I assume you have been made aware of what your main task is?”

“Yeah. Playing the living blood-bank of the Uchiha clan’s king. I know the drill.”

“I don’t think you realize just how important your task is. Itachi and Sasuke are the last living members of the Uchiha clan’s royal line. Thanks to some human created disease, Itachi is slowly dying – “

“Wait… A disease?”

“Yes… It makes the body slowly deteriorate from the inside. After a while, the victims can’t sustain themselves on blood anymore and the body fails completely. It’s only a matter of time before Itachi has to succumb to it.”

“But… Why is only he affected?”

“Oh, it’s not only him. Most of the Uchiha clan is already dead thanks to it. Many other clans were affected too, although not as strongly. Some are immune to it, while others aren’t.”

“How does the disease spread?” Naruto asked. He realized he might be in the danger zone too. It made him more anxious than he had anticipated. Despite what he’d told Sasuke about wanting to die a thousand times over rather than being a vampire, he still wanted to live.

“Through blood. But don’t worry; you’re not going to be affected. You’d have to drink his blood to be in danger of being infected, and even then, as a Turned, you wouldn’t be in danger of getting it. The spreading of that disease has been stopped a long time ago, anyway. It was just as dangerous for humans as for vampires. Thousands died.”

“Is it like aids? Like, does it affect the immune system?”

“Well, no. Aids won’t affect a vampire since they have no immune system. This disease deteriorates the blood specifically. But as I said, the disease isn’t being spread anymore. It was an isolated experiment. That brings us back to the issue at hand. Your role. You shouldn’t underestimate that role. Of course, your involvement has two sides, but Sasuke wouldn’t have chosen you if he didn’t think you had qualities that made you especially fitting.”

“What do you mean… my involvement had two sides…?”

“Well, you didn’t think they attacked the party you were at for no reason?”

Naruto knew he must look like a question mark.

“Ah… Of course, you don’t remember,” Kakashi said. “Well, you will, eventually. And then you’ll understand everything a little better.”

“What do you mean… I’ll remember eventually?”

“All fledglings struggle with their turning. It is not unusual to loose large chunks of memory, sometimes forever, other times for just a while.”

“Then… What if I’ve lost my memory forever?”

Kakashi sighed. “Maybe that’d be for the best.” He looked up at the small screen announcing the stations. “That’s our stop.”

He got up and Naruto followed him out of the train and onto the deserted platform. The Sound village was a small, windblown place consisting of old, grey houses that seemed to huddle together around a small village center. As they left the platform, the others joined them, seemingly from nowhere.

Naruto slowed down so that he could walk next to Kiba who trailed a little behind the others. Kakashi led the way.

“You bet Kakashi’s with us to keep an eye on us,” Kiba said. “Sasuke probably told Itachi that he thinks we’re doing a poor job hiding our trail of dead bodies….” Naruto noted, not for the first time, that when they prince or the king were not present, the others used their given names. “I guess he’s right, though,” Kiba added. ”We’ve left a few people with puncture wounds on their necks… It’s a dead fucking giveaway, but the government already knows we’re here. As long as we don’t leave direct evidence that could lead back to our hideout, we should be okay.”

“How long has Kakashi been with you?”

There was something about the man that made Naruto feel that he was different from other humans, even from the other servants or whatever they were who lived in the old church together with the vampires.

“He’s old,” Kiba said. “Older than me. That’s all I know. Allegedly, he used to be bonded to one of the vampires in the royal line. Seriously, you should talk to Gaara about it, if you can make him talk. He knows more than me about that kinda thing.”

They made their way through deserted streets up a hill until the houses started thinning out. They followed a narrow road that turned into a path through a forest with huge, ominous trees until they reached what looked like the door to a bunker set into the ground.

Kakashi stopped and motioned for the others to go in before him. “After you.”

Ino went first. “I hate this place,” Naruto heard her whisper to Tenten, who nodded.

They followed a dimly lit corridor further and further down under ground until it led them out into a lofty, oval room.

A red-haired woman met them.

“You came right on time,” she said. “We were just about to go out and hunt.” She grinned. “The more the merrier.”

 

\-----

 

It was four o’clock at night and they had been walking for half an hour. In a small place like this, Naruto couldn’t understand how there were enough people out at night to feed a whole coven of vampires. The red-haired woman was not alone. She was accompanied by a white-haired man with a continual smirk on his face, and a tall bulldozer of a man who spoke little but nevertheless gave off an air of kindness.

Naruto soon learned their names: Karin, Suigetsu and Juugo.

Karin measured Naruto with a smirk.

“So… Sasuke picked you?”

“He attacked me and kidnapped me, if that’s what you mean.”

Karin snorted. “He has a weird sense of taste. Though, I suppose you’re not half-bad to look at.”

Naruto chose to ignore that comment. “Where are we headed?” He asked to get her over on other thoughts.

“Oh, just over the hill there.”

They were in the middle of the thickest forest, but once they reached the top of the hill they looked right down onto an open area between the threes where a couple of barracks stood.

“Wait,” Kiba said when Karin, Juugo and Suigetsu made their way down to the clearing. “What are you doing? We can’t just go attacking people in their homes.”  
Karin shrugged. “That’s how you have to do it out here. It’s not like in the big city.”

“It’s too risky,” Ino said. “How do we know how many are in there? What if someone sees us and calls the police?”

“Listen,” Karin said and placed her hands on her hips. “We’ve been keeping an eye on these assholes for a while. It’s no coincidence that we went to exactly this place tonight. They’re scum. One of he guys we’re going for tonight is known for beating up and raping his girlfriends if they annoyed him.”

She hesitated.

“I would know. I was once one of them.”

The silence suddenly became palpable after those words.

“Was he the one who…?” Naruto asked.

“Who killed me? He beat me bloody and threw an empty whiskey bottle after me when I finally fled. I would have died in the woods from the injuries if Orochimaru hadn’t found me.” She adjusted her glasses. “So… Are you coming or not? We don’t have all night.”

She turned on her heel and marched down the hill towards the barracks, not waiting for anyone. The others hesitated only for a second before following her.

“She’s been thirsting for this guys blood since she started getting her memories back,” Juugo told Naruto as they trailed after the others.

“How long is it since she was turned?”

“About a year.”

“A year?!”

Juugo shrugged.

Naruto was reeling. “It takes a year before the memories come back?”

“It varies. Some never even loses them. I didn’t.”

He sped up as he saw Karin go up to the door of the nearest barrack. Ino, Kiba and Shino went to one corner of the house and Gaara to the other, while Suigetsu and Juugo went over to check on the other barrack.

Karin knocked on the door as Naruto hurried over to Gaara, placing himself outside of the circle of light cast by the outdoor lamp. Karin knocked again, more impatient this time. Eventually, the door opened. A woman stood in the doorway.

“Is John in?” Karin asked.

The woman frowned. “Who are you?”

Karin smiled coldly. “An old friend. Is he in? It’s urgent.”

The woman stared at Karin for a long moment, suspicion and fear warring for dominion on her face, before she turned and called into the house. Naruto hear a man swear and then a loud thump as he presumably made his way to the door.

“What the fuck is this ruckus in the middle of the night…!”

He stopped dead as he saw Karin.

“Karin…” He sounded confused at first, but then annoyance settled on his haggard but handsome face. He was a tall, sturdy man. The type whom Naruto would have steered away from before he was turned. Now, though, he knew that the man posed no threat to him. 

He concentrated on the scent of the two inside the barrack. There was nothing appealing about either of them, but he supposed they’d have to do. He noticed that there were more humans close by, probably in the other barrack where Juugo and Suigetsu stood guard.

“What are you doing here?” Karin’s boyfriend-turned-killer said.

“Who is she?” Said the woman who had opened the door.

“Stay out of this, Sofia,” the man, John, said. “She’s no one.” He was still looking at Karin. “I thought you were dead.”

“I was,” Karin said and smiled sweetly. “But I came back to see you.”

John sneered at her. He stepped out on the stairs and closed the door behind him. He remained standing a few steps above Karin so that he could keep looking down at her along his nose. She looked up at him without breaking eye contact, without even blinking.

“Did you look for me?” Karin said. “That day when I fled?”

“Of course I did,” John said. “I thought you’d gone back home to your mother, but when she called the next day she said you never showed up. Where were you?”

“ _She_ called _you_? You didn’t even bother to call her first to find out if I was okay?”

“You can be glad I went out to look for you after all that shit you spewed before you left.”

He stepped menacingly closer to her and grabbed her arm.

“Where the fuck did you go, huh?” He hissed. “To that shithead Tom, I bet. Are you aware how much trouble you got me into? I was accused of murder! I had been thrown in jail if there hadn’t been so little evidence!”

Karin’s hand shot out and clutched John’s jaw tightly. She pulled him with her down the stairs, out on the ground before the barrack, and held him down so that their faces were level with each other.

“It _was_ murder,” she said. “You killed me. Congrats. Bet you were grateful you got rid of me, huh?”

He struggled with her hold on him. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” He bit out. He grabbed her arm and wrenched it away. Naruto thought that Karin must have let go of him out of her own free will, because if she used her full strength he wouldn’t have a chance against her.

“You’re fucking mental,” he hissed. He grabbed her shoulder and shook her. “And you know what? I was grateful I was rid of you. You were just souring my life, making every day miserable with that ugly, sour mug of yours.”

“I bet she’s better, right?” Karin said and nodded towards the woman now standing in the door to the barrack, watching everything with concern. “I bet you don’t have to beat her up every other day because she displeases you for some inane reason. She’s probably docile and sweet, right? Lets you do anything to her?”

She was driving him backwards towards the stairs now; he took one stumbling step backwards each time she took one step forwards. Karin probably hadn’t realized that her fangs were showing, but they glinted dangerously in the bluish fluorescent light.

John stumbled backwards against the stairs.

“V-vampire,” he stammered.

Karin chuckled. “Yeah, you finally got it.”

John did a mad dash towards the door to the barrack, but Karin was too quick for him. She grabbed the back of his sweater.

“Get the woman,” she said, and Ino darted forward, pushing the door open just as Sofia was about to slam it in her face. She grabbed Sofia, who kicked and screamed, by the front of her shirt and threw her out onto the ground next to her boyfriend.

“Don’t take it personal,” Karin said sweetly. “We gotta feed, you know, and there aren’t that many people around here so I thought it was a good idea to start with the bad eggs first.”

Sofia clutched John’s arm. “You’ll be found out,” she sputtered. “The police will know that it was a vampire attack!”

Karin raised her eyebrows. “And how will they figure out that?”

“T-the puncture wounds,” Sofia said. Her voice shook, but she met Karin’s eyes without looking away. “The drained blood… The lack of motive…”

Karin tapped her foot. “Yeah… You’re right. Good thing I’ve thought about all that. I know that John has a shotgun… Think you can get that for me?” She asked Ino, who was standing closest. “In the cupboard behind the door.”

As Ino went inside to get it, Karin continued. “Everyone knows dear John here has a temper. Unfortunately, tonight Sofia… That’s your name, right? Sofia did something that became the last drop for his famous temper. He got his gun out… Maybe he only meant to scare her, who knows. A shot went off and hit her in the stomach. Their neighbors woke up from the ruckus and came to check, so John had to shoot them too. Unfortunate. They were only innocent bystanders… who also innocently stood by at several other occasions when John let his anger go out over other people.” Karin sighed. “At last, John killed himself. Out of grief or because he realized he was a goner as soon as the police showed up, we’ll never know.”

Ino threw Karin the shotgun and she took it with one hand.

“Unfortunately, this means I actually have to shoot you. Or else the story won’t be very convincing, you know.”

Naruto watched all of this with a sense of unease. He exchanged glances with Gaara, who looked slightly exasperated.

“Orochimaru’s group is known for their revenge killings,” Gaara said softly. “It’s not what most clan leaders would approve of, but they keep it clean and haven’t revealed us yet.”

Juugo and Suigetsu came over with two men in tow and shoved them down on the ground next to Sophia and John.

“W-what’s going on here?” One of the men asked John. “Do you know these guys?”

The other guy had noticed Karin.

“Karin?” He asked, incredulous. “Shit… I thought you were dead.”

Karin grinned, baring her fangs, and the man scrambled backwards into his friend.

“Y-you’re a vampire!”

Karin rolled her eyes. “Gee, thanks for pointing out the obvious.”

She shot Sofia in the stomach without preamble. Chaos ensued. Three more shots were fired. Karin seemed to be in complete control even as everyone around her was flailing around. Naruto felt the scent of fresh blood fill his nose and soon he was barely aware what he was doing. He found an open wound and had his fill until he was shoved away by Karin. A small grapple ensued until Gaara cut through and settled it.

By the time Naruto started coming back to himself, silence had settled over the small clearing with the barracks. All around him he saw pools of blood, crumbled bodies, and sated vampires curled up together.

“Kakashi ought to be proud of us,” Kiba said. He was sitting right next to Naruto, propped up against the wall of a small shed. “Karin has thought about everything. No one’s gonna suspect a vampire attack.”

“Doesn’t it feel a little… cynical?”

Kiba shrugged. “You’ve killed before. What makes this different?”

“They suffered… The gun wounds… They had to bleed out for it to seem natural that their bodies were emptied for blood. They were in pain…”

“Well… When you mention it, I supposed it’s different from when you bite them. The biting is… kinda sensual, almost?” Kiba grimaced. “I dunno… When I was bitten, I had already bled a lot. I wasn’t in pain anymore by the time that vampire came along.”

“… When Sasuke bit me…” Naruto fiddled with a button on his jacket. He had forgotten a lot of things, but that he remembered very well. “It was, ah… It wasn’t exactly good, but it wasn’t bad either. I mean, I was terrified… But when he touched me and leant over me I just felt… expectant.”

“Yeah… Natural vampires has that about them... If they want to, they can charm you straight into death even while you see the danger. I’ve seen Gaara do it. Sasuke too.”

Naruto frowned. He was about to ask what Kiba meant with that… Natural vampires…? But then the group was set in motion and they headed back to the hideout, and Naruto forgot all about his question.

 

\------

 

They spent the day in Orochimaru’s hideout, sleeping off the night’s events. Naruto couldn’t sleep at first. He just trotted back and forth inside the small, dark room he’d been offered. After a hunt he usually saw either Sasuke or Itachi, or both, and they helped take the edge off. Now he had, for the first time, no one to go to. He wondered what Kiba and the others liked to do right after a hunt. Did they just sleep? It seemed impossible with all that energy coursing through him, making him feel alive to a point that was painful.

He finally left his room in search for something to distract him. He didn’t know exactly what he wanted but he couldn’t be alone for a second longer. He passed a huge, open room where he saw Orochimaru sit perched elegantly on a couch, dressed in layers of expensive silk. He saw Naruto and gave him a slow smile.

Naruto felt like something cold had slithered down his spine.

“Naruto-kun,” Orochimaru said in his throaty, low voice. “Please, stop for a moment.”

Naruto stared longingly down the hallway. He took a careful step closer to the door.

The human that resided with Orochimaru, Kabuto, came in through a door on the left side of the room, carrying a tray with a glass filled with a dark liquid. He measured Naruto with keen eyes behind his glasses before he placed the tray on a table next to his master.

“I’m looking for the others,” Naruto said. “Kiba, or Gaara…”

Orochimaru grabbed the glass and lifted it delicately to his lips.

“You seem out of sorts,” Orochimaru said. “I suppose, being Itachi’s provider you’ve never gotten around to feel the thrum of life in your veins for longer than a few hours.”

Naruto was surprised how spot on those words were. He lingered.

“It seems impossible to sleep when in such a state, doesn’t it?” Orochimaru continued. “Let me tell you something…” He beckoned Naruto closer. Naruto hesitantly entered the room, but kept his distance. There was something about Orochimaru that made him vary. “The time right after feeding is the perfect time to live a little. Do something reckless. You have nothing to fear, after all. You’re practically immortal.”

Naruto really felt that he could do anything at the moment… and yet, all he really wanted was to run all the way back to Konoha, to Sasuke, and be with him.

“Did you know, that when you feed your body briefly returns to something close to its original living state? Much more endurable, of course, and without the pesky disadvantage of the human fragility, but for a moment you can feel and touch and make love like you could before again.”

Naruto blushed.

Orochimaru smirked. “But of course you knew that already. I’m sure Sasuke has been more than eager to show you.”

There was something about Orochimaru’s imploring gaze behind the knowing smile that made Naruto uncomfortable. He took a step backwards.

“Please…” Orochimaru said, and in the blink of an eye he was suddenly right next to Naruto, blocking his escape. Naruto froze.

“Don’t look so alarmed,” Orochimaru said. “I only wish to enlighten you. Most vampires lose their carnal desire after turning…” His fingers grazed Naruto’s chin. “But not all. Some, miraculously, retain it, and after a feeding… Well, that blood makes itself useful in so many ways…”

His fingers danced lightly down along Naruto’s chest towards his stomach. Every cell in Naruto’s body was screaming at him to get away from there, but he was paralyzed like a prey in the clutches of its hunter.

Orochimaru was quicker and stronger than him… If he fled, he might not have a chance to get away…

“Naruto?”

Naruto turned around. Gaara stood in the doorway behind him. 

“Gaara!” Naruto had never before in his life felt such relief. “I was looking for you.”

He shimmied out of Orochimaru’s grip. “Well… Thanks for the, uh… talk,” he muttered as he backed towards the door. “Good night... or, uh… day.”

“Thanks for saving me,” he whispered when he and Gaara were a little further down the hallway.

“What was going on there?” Gaara asked.

Naruto shuddered. “I’m not sure you want to know.”

Gaara must have noticed how shook Naruto seemed, because he invited him into his room. It had a more personal touch than Naruto’s, with a few personal objects on tables around the room, so it appeared that Gaara and the others had stayed there before.

Gaara sat Naruto down on the edge of his bed.

“Are you okay?”

Naruto nodded. His mind was reeling. Something Orochimaru had said suddenly came to the forefront of his mind.

“Is it true that…” Naruto said. “Does vampires really lose their… the, uh… the desire to…” He gestured vaguely.

“I suppose you’re trying to ask me if vampires lose all sexual desire,” Gaara said with a voice that was as monotone as ever. “It is the norm, yes, seeing as there is no possibility for procreation anymore. Though, some retain it, I’ve heard.”

Naruto scratched his cheek. The question of whether Gaara had was lying heavily in the air, but Naruto had a feeling he knew the answer already if the clinical approach Gaara took when talking about it was any indication.

“What do you guys usually do after hunting?” He asked instead.

“That depends on who you ask. Sasuke, for instance, always has sex.”

Naruto nearly choked on his own spit.

Gaara didn’t seem to notice how Naruto suddenly blustered.

“Others seek more platonic company, like Kiba and Ino. And then there are those who seek new adrenaline highs. My brother is one such.” A shadow of sadness crossed Gaara’s features for a second before it disappeared just as quickly again. “He was impossible to keep in check after feeding. He would do the wildest things just to really feel that, in a sense, he was still alive….”

Gaara took a decanter from a table and poured an amber liquid into two glasses.

“Personally, I like to savor the more subtle advantages of a feeding by enjoying experiences that I’m otherwise less sensitive to.”

He offered Naruto one of the glasses.

“Like taste.”

He knocked back the glass, and Naruto did the same after sniffing the liquid and ascertaining that it was liqueur.

It was true… the taste lingered potently inside of Naruto’s mouth for a few seconds, and the burn as it slid down his throat reminded him for a moment of a different life.

“It doesn’t have the same effect as on humans, of course,” Gaara said. “But for someone like me, just the fact that I can taste something else than blood is a novelty.”

They shared more of the liqueur until Naruto finally started feeling a little drowsy. He wasn’t very eager to go back to his room in case Orochimaru would come to see him. He had a feeling that Gaara understood that because he didn’t suggest that Naruto should leave. After a while, Naruto fell asleep next to Gaara on his roomy bed.

 

\-----

 

They went back to Konoha the following night. Naruto was grateful for that. He wasn’t sure he could manage another day in that creepy dungeon. He slept for most of the train ride. When they got off the train and breathed in the clear night air, Naruto almost felt like a normal person again. His body felt warm inside and the light breeze stung pleasantly against his cheeks. He slowed down so that he walked a little behind the others while they casually made their way home among last minute shoppers. He didn’t feel the debilitating hunger that he had become so intimately familiar with lately, and it was liberating. He could look at the humans as just regular people again, not like food.

Kakashi slowed down until he was walking next to Naruto.

“First time not feeding Itachi?” He asked.

Naruto nodded. He realized he would have to do it as soon as he came back home. His heart sank in his chest.

Kakashi patted his shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll get more used to it eventually. Well, I’m leaving you guys here.” He waved goodbye to the others and gave Naruto another pat on the shoulder before he left down a side street.

Naruto shuffled his feet the rest of the way home. Not even the excitement of seeing Sasuke again after so long (it had only been 24 hours but it still felt like a long time) could cheer him up.

For the first time, he followed the others into the recreation room. Gaara left them and went up to his own room, while Ino, Kiba, Tenten and Shino relaxed into some of the many couches and chairs strewn around the room. Naruto just paced the room restlessly, listening to the sporadic conversations with half an ear.

“Aren’t you supposed to feed the king?” Ino asked.

“Let the guy get some time to enjoy himself for a moment, won’t you?” Kiba said.

Ino shrugged. “Seems to me like he’s putting it off.”

“I would too,” Tenten said. “Doesn’t sound pleasant to be drained again so soon.”

“He doesn’t drain me,” Naruto said. “But I get really relaxed, and then I just sleep for days.”

“Sounds like you haven’t grown used to your body yet,” Ino said. “I slept a lot in the beginning too. It’ll pass eventually.”

Naruto left the room under the guise of going up to Itachi before he had to hear another comment about how everything would _eventually_ pass. He could sense Sasuke in his room and wondered if he was still sleeping at this time of night.

He took the staircase two steps at a time. He felt an overpowering eagerness to see him again now that he felt his presence. He couldn’t feel his scent, though, so he couldn’t have been hunting while they were gone. The door to Sasuke’s room slid open easily when Naruto touched it. Once again he felt the blood thrumming through his body in excitement, pooling in his lower abdomen.

Sasuke was lying on his stomach on the bed, the sheets twisted around him, face buried in the pillows. He moved only minutely when Naruto entered, just enough to gaze up at him over his arm.

Naruto closed the door behind him and walked slowly over to Sasuke. He expected him to tell him that he should see to Itachi first, but Sasuke said nothing. He remained still as Naruto sat down next to him and placed a hand on his back.

“You’re cold,” Naruto said.

“It only feels that way to you because you’ve just fed.”

Naruto grabbed the sheet and pulled it down, revealing Sasuke’s naked back inch by inch. He leant over Sasuke and pressed his nose to the back of Sasuke’s neck. No pulse. No heat. The absurdity of it suddenly became much more prominent now that Naruto’s own body felt so warm.

It didn’t diminish his desire for Sasuke, though.

Sasuke turned over. Naruto nuzzled his neck and licked the side of it where, deep under the skin, blood should have throbbed. Sasuke did the same to Naruto. He pushed his face against the side of Naruto’s neck and flattened his tongue against the warm skin.

Naruto let out a soft breath.

He sought Sasuke’s mouth, but Sasuke just nuzzled his neck again. Naruto gasped when he felt Sasuke’s fangs graze against his skin. Then Sasuke shoved him over onto his back and was over him, holding him down before he could react. Naruto bared his neck, knowing what was coming. He groaned when he felt Sasuke’s fangs sink into his skin. He felt the blood flow out of the wound and dribble down the side of his neck. Sasuke lapped it up and sucked on the wound.

Naruto writhed underneath him, desperate for relief. Sasuke pressed his thigh up against Naruto’s crotch and rubbed. Naruto groaned. He grabbed Sasuke’s waist and felt his naked skin against his palms.

“Fuck…”

Sasuke’s thigh was relentless against his swollen cock. Naruto’s hands trailed downwards, cupping Sasuke’s ass and squeezing. Sasuke made a noise that sounded a lot like a growl. His lips moved from Naruto’s neck and down to his collarbone, where he mouthed Naruto’s flushed skin. He laid more weight on his lower body, pushing himself up against Naruto’s pelvis and squeezing his throbbing cock. Then he suddenly moved downwards, lifting Naruto’s shirt and nipping his way down his stomach.

Naruto whimpered when he felt Sasuke’s tongue lave at the sensitive skin right above the lining of his pants. As he felt Sasuke unzip his pants, he realized that those fangs soon would be dangerously close to a very sensitive part of him. It made him involuntarily thrust up towards Sasuke’s mouth.

Sasuke pulled down Naruto’s pants and boxers, and nuzzled the warm, sensitive hollow between his groin and his thigh. Naruto felt teeth graze his skin, and then they sunk in, once again drawing blood. Naruto cried out. Not in pain, but in pure pleasure. He grabbed Sasuke’s hair and dug his fingers into his scalp. He grabbed his cock with his other hand, squeezing and caressing it to the sight of Sasuke’s beautiful face down between his legs.

Sasuke glanced up at him under heavy lids with a look as though he knew exactly what Naruto was thinking. He licked his lips, lapping up the blood that had smeared over them, and then he turned his head and took the tip of Naruto’s cock into his hot mouth. Naruto swore as he came immediately upon feeling Sasuke’s tongue caressing his cock.

Sasuke sucked gently at his cock before he let go and sat back.

Naruto took in his lean, naked body with appreciation.

Sasuke sighed. He dried away any residues of blood from his mouth.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said softly and without looking at Naruto. Then he stood and grabbed Naruto, jerking him out of the bed. He shoved him towards the door so hard that he stumbled.

“Get out,” he said.

“But…” Naruto fumbled to keep his pants up.

“Just go,” Sasuke bit out. “It was a mistake… Go!”

Naruto hesitated another moment before he finally moved towards the door. He thought he saw Sasuke press his hands to his face before he turned away and closed the door behind him.

 

\-----

 

“How was the trip to Sound?” Itachi asked after he had fed.

Naruto felt drowsy, but not in the nice, woozy way he usually did. Now there was a tinge of discomfort to it, like the kind of nausea one could experience when overexerting oneself.

“Strange,” he murmured. “The vampires there… they seem so… angry.”

“I'm not surprised,” Itachi said. “Orochimaru is known for picking victims of unfair deeds and encourage them to take revenge.”

Naruto would have fallen asleep if he didn’t feel so sick. He tried to think of something to say to distract himself from the discomfort.

“Why do they keep you up here?” He said.

“You seem to assume that I didn’t choose it myself.”

“Of course not! You’re the king, aren’t you supposed to have the best?”

“This is the best,” Itachi said. “To me, it couldn’t be better. I’ve never cared for extravagancy or wished to ascertain my position over others. I like it up here. It is almost entirely quiet and the scents aren’t so strong. And it’s the only room with a window that isn’t nailed shut. I get to see the sun almost the entire day up here.”

“But isn’t it tiresome? With the sunlight? I mean, I saw Sasuke stand in the middle of the sunlight once, but… to have it in here all the time?”

“I’m grateful that I was born the way I am for that reason, at least. I don’t think I could have lived like this for so long, knowing I could never see the sun again.”

“What do you mean with that? You were born in what way?”

“I was born into this life.”

“As in… you were born a vampire?”

Itachi nodded, his expression saddened. “Yes.”

“That’s not… How is that possible?”

Itachi caressed Naruto’s cheek. “I’ll explain it to you later, when you are not so tired. You should try to sleep now.”

Naruto frowned but didn’t argue. He really wanted to sleep.

“Then… When you said you were grateful you could get the chance to see the sun again because you were born this way… Does that mean… Could I ever hope to see the sun again?”

Itachi averted his eyes. He didn’t answer.

“I thought so,” Naruto whispered.

 


	5. Bonds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! It's been a while! Sorry about that but it's been a really hectic month. I hope you'll enjoy this chapter ^^

Naruto drifted in and out of sleep for what felt like days. Once he was awake long enough to sense someone near his door.

“Have you checked up on Naruto?” he heard someone say, but before he could place the voice he drifted off again.

When he woke up again, he felt slightly more lucid. He shook off the shadowy dregs of a strange dream. Before he could recollect it, he got distracted by a familiar presence right next to him. He turned over. On the edge of his bed sat Sasuke, dressed in only a loosely fastened robe.

Naruto didn’t think before he moved; it happened instinctually. Sasuke’s pull on him was so total that he could do nothing but obey it. He rolled over, still a little drowsy, and pulled him closer. Then he pressed his face to Sasuke’s stomach.

Sasuke cradled the back of Naruto’s head. They held each other in silence until Naruto fell asleep again.

After a while Naruto started waking up with a less blurry mind. He would just lie on his back in the middle of the bed and stare up at the roof and wait… he wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, other than that slowly but surely memories came trickling back. They came in random batches, but at first they were mostly from his childhood. He remembered how his father and his mother looked… how they smiled down at him with their eyes full of kindness… how they gave him a kitsune plushy that he refused to be separated from for even a minute. And then a new memory flashed past, of the kitsune plushy sitting on a shelf in a dorm room… of his roommate good-naturedly making fun of him for it… of… The memory flashed over to a vision of his roommate, his best friend, bleeding out on the ground, of Sasuke standing over him and watching Naruto.

He threw himself out of the bed so abruptly that he almost fell face first to the floor. He got up with so swiftly that he nearly stumbled, ran for the door and slammed it open.

“Sasuke!” he called, his voice nearly a growl.

He rushed down the hallway, down the stairs, and almost ran into Sasuke in the hallway below. He grabbed hold of his shoulders and threw him hard against the wall.

“You killed him!” he snarled into Sasuke’s face.

Sasuke didn’t bat an eyelash. He didn’t try to free himself from Naruto’s grip either.

Naruto felt confused again for a second. Who had Sasuke killed? Why was he so angry with him? But then he shook off the confusion and he remembered again. He clutched that memory as he shook Sasuke again.

“You killed my best friend!”

Sasuke was doing nothing to defend himself.

“How could you?” Naruto whispered.

“Naruto… To me, he was no one. He was nothing more than another prey, just like the ones you go out and kill without remorse every time you need to feed.”

Naruto clutched Sasuke’s shoulders harder. “Why?” he hissed. “Why didn’t you turn him instead? Why did you choose me?”

Sasuke grabbed Naruto’s wrists, and when he pushed his hands away, Naruto didn’t resist all that strongly.

“I chose you,” Sasuke said. “Neither of us can change that now.”

Naruto leant closer to Sasuke and rested his forehead against his shoulder.

Sasuke placed one hand on Naruto’s back. “And I don’t regret my choice.”

 

\------

 

Naruto had never thought he’d admit something like this, but he was starting to miss the days when he remembered nothing. Kakashi had been right. Loosing his memories forever would have been a blessing.

Slowly but surely the haziness that had seemed to take permanent place in his head after he turned, juggling his memories and confusing his feelings, dissipate completely… and left a desolate wilderness in its wake.

He started having dreams… horrible, dark dreams that echoed with the panicked screams of drunken youths whose promising lives had suddenly been put to a brutal end. He saw his friend die, again and again. And then he started seeing Sakura dying too. In his dreams, he could see her face as she slowly faded away. He tried to scream at himself to make it stop, but he was incapable of cutting in. All he could do was watch as she slowly died, unable to stop it.

He didn’t know who else to go to after one of those dreams than Sasuke. Sasuke never complained and never turned him away. He accepted Naruto into his bed without question and held Naruto as he curled up against him. After he had been out hunting, he would let Naruto bite him and draw some blood from him. If Naruto wanted to have sex, Sasuke put himself at his disposal without demanding anything back from Naruto.

After a while, Naruto realized that he had more power over Sasuke than he could have dreamed. Anytime he wanted Sasuke, whatever he wanted, he was his. He didn’t even nag about Naruto seeing Itachi anymore.

“Naruto,” Sasuke said one night, or perhaps it was daytime. They were lying in Sasuke’s bed, and the sheets were spotted from the blood that had escaped when Naruto bit Sasuke.

“I’ve made a mistake.”

Naruto, who was content from feeding, just ‘hm’ed without really hearing what Sasuke was saying.

Sasuke touched Naruto’s cheek. Then he wiped away a stray drop of blood from his lip.

He didn’t say anything more, and Naruto didn’t ask because he was already drifting off to sleep.

 

\------

 

After some time – Naruto wasn’t sure for how long, only that it had been so long that he was starting to get weakened, even with the blood that Sasuke gave him – Naruto finally started going out hunting again. He felt different now than he had before. Stronger, surer, and more focused.

As time passed, he got more and more adept at hunting, and as he got more used to his body and his urges, he also gained more control over both.

He wished Sasuke would come with him on the hunts, but he seldom did.

“He’s worried about Itachi,” Kiba said.

“He’ll starve himself.”

“But he’s got you, right?”

Naruto exchanged looks with Gaara. He had a feeling the redhead was very old. He always looked at Naruto with so much knowing. In that moment, he felt that Gaara knew something… He looked like he was about to say something, but then he looked away.

“Let’s go,” Kiba said. “We’re on a schedule, remember?”

It apparently wasn’t unusual that they picked out a victim beforehand. One of them would follow their designated prey and figure out the daily routines, picking out the best time to make their move. Naruto hadn’t been allowed to do that in the beginning, but Kiba and the others had deemed him ready a few weeks ago. Tonight they knew where they were going, and what they were doing.

They followed a woman onto the tube. She was going home from work. Naruto had picked her out because of her rich blood. It was only Kiba, Gaara and himself who were out hunting tonight, and Gaara barely drank anything, so she would be enough for the three of them.

As the train started emptying, Naruto casually sat down next to the woman. The weather was getting chillier, and for appearances sake, he wore an orange duffel jacket. Sasuke didn’t like his choice of color. He thought it was too conspicuous. But thankfully, Sasuke wasn’t there to admonish him about it.

A few stragglers got off on the next station, and finally only the three of them and the woman was left.

She looked around as though she wondered where everyone was going. Little did she know that everyone left because they subconsciously felt that something dangerous was in there with them. Kakashi had explained that although humans might not realize it, they noticed that something was off if a vampire stood too close to them. They could feel the lack of body heat, sense the lack of heartbeat, and maybe they even sensed something else… A hunger in their eyes, a vicious strength under that treacherous soft-looking skin, a bloodlust like that of a puma getting ready to pounce.

"Excuse me... Sir?" the woman said.

Naruto turned towards her.

"Um... This is the 6 line, right?"

"Yes."

"Oh, good. I started worrying when so many people left."

"No need to worry," Naruto said, and gave her a reassuring smile, at the same time baring the fangs that had been pressing on his gums for a good half an hour now.

The woman paled, her eyes growing big as saucers.

"You're in the best of hands."

 

\------

 

As always after feeding, Naruto felt a strong need to see Sasuke. Lately, he’d found Sasuke much more… compliant than he used to be, and while it was a bit strange, for the most part it was thrilling. He knew that Sasuke would be waiting for him just as eagerly as he was to get to him, and sure enough, after leaving the two others to clean up and rushing back home, he found Sasuke in his room, opening the door for Naruto.

"Sasuke," Naruto growled, and Sasuke’s eyes seemed to grow even darker under his half-lowered eyelids.

Naruto ran a hand along Sasuke's throat, and he bared it in expectation.

"I want to bite you, and I want to fuck you. Which one do you want?"

He leaned closer, breathing on Sasuke's neck.

"Or do you want both?"

Sasuke couldn't even speak, he just moaned softly.

"I asked you a question," Naruto growled low in his throat. "Answer me."

"Fuck me," Sasuke ground out.

Naruto led him backwards, and placed him on the bed, slipping off his clothes and spreading his legs.

Naruto took a step back to admire him while he took off his own clothes. Sasuke squirmed at the loss of contact, but he waited patiently and was rewarded when Naruto slipped between his legs and immediately sheathed himself inside of Sasuke.

Sasuke shuddered and re-angled himself slightly so that he could fit Naruto more snugly.

Naruto moved roughly and sharply, and Sasuke embraced each thrust.

Each time felt like coming alive.

"Sasuke."

The word was a gruff command.

Sasuke immediately looked at Naruto. Naruto was surprised to see the affection on his face.

"Kiss me," Naruto whispered.

And Sasuke did.

Naruto came inside Sasuke with a garbled moan.

When the last wave of his orgasm had washed over him, he gently extracted himself from Sasuke, and collapsed to his side next to him.

"Hey," he said softly. Sasuke looked over at him.

Naruto lay down flat on his back, legs slightly spread, and pointed at his neck.

"Here," he said.

Sasuke needed no further coaxing.

He was on top of Naruto in the blink of an eye, his teeth latched onto Naruto's throat.

While Sasuke fed, Naruto let his fingers ghost across Sasuke’s back, down to his ass, where they lingered, tracing gentle circles into his skin, before traveling upwards again.

Sasuke took a little more blood from Naruto than he normally would and it left Naruto slightly dizzy.

Sasuke rested his head on Naruto's chest, not bothering to roll off of him. Naruto cradled him in his arms and nuzzled his hair, and fell asleep, deeply content.

 

\------

 

Naruto woke up in Sasuke’s bed. He had no idea how long he’d been sleeping. He sat up and stretched. He felt well rested and powerful. The blood was doing its thing and regenerating his body as much as it could be regenerated.

Then he remembered that he had to feed Itachi. How long had it been? And why hadn’t Sasuke woken him up? Sasuke was nowhere to be seen.

Naruto got dressed and hurried up to the attic, but at the topmost landing he stopped. He heard voices from within Itachi’s room. He moved quietly over to the door. The voices belonged to Itachi and Sasuke. Naruto should just knock on the door and enter. Any moment now, Sasuke would sense that he was there.

But he hesitated.

“You gave him too much,” he heard Itachi say. “He’s taking over the control.”

Sasuke didn’t answer. In stead he changed the subject.

“Is he not feeding you well?”

“I can’t seem to extract what I need anymore. You know which way it’s going, Sasuke. There’s no point in fighting it.”

There was silence again.

“You’ll be a good leader for them,” Itachi said, his voice soft. “You’ve already been taking good care of them while I’ve been sick.”

“I don’t think I can,” Sasuke whispered. “I’ve lost them… Naruto is…”

“He’s a bit wild, but he has a good head on his shoulders, and a pure heart despite everything. Try to trust him.”

“How can I trust him when all he cares about is killing?” Sasuke whispered hoarsely. “I’ve given him too much, and he’s misusing it. And I can’t stop him. I can’t control him.”

Naruto backed off from the door. He felt numb, like someone had thrown him into ice water.

He hadn’t made a sound, despite the fact that he currently wasn’t very concerned about staying quiet, but the door barged open and then Sasuke stood in the doorway, looking at Naruto as though he knew exactly what was going through his head.

Naruto wasn’t sure himself what was going through his head.

“You weren’t supposed to hear that,” Sasuke said softly.

“I gathered.”

“Tell him,” Itachi said from inside the room. “There’s no point in keeping him in the dark. There are a lot of things he needs to know which we should have explained to him a long time ago.”

Sasuke hesitated, but finally he took a step to the side so that Naruto could come in. He closed the door after him.

Itachi was sitting upright on the bed, leant against a big pile of pillows. Naruto realized it had been a while since he fed him last.

“Don’t worry about feeding me,” Itachi said. “I’ve been getting what I need from Sasuke.”

“I’m sorry,” Naruto said. “I’ve been skirting my duties.”

Itachi waved one hand dismissively. “You’ve barely been hunting lately, and that is understandable. I’ve heard that you’ve managed it through the transition.”

Naruto nodded.

“Good.” Itachi smiled. “As you’ve already heard, very soon I’ll most probably not be needing your services anymore.”

Naruto went over and sat on the edge of the bed.

“I’m sorry… I feel like I could have done more. I should have been less reluctant…”

Itachi placed a hand on his arm.

“There’s nothing you could have done,” he said. “My body refuses to make use of the blood I drink, so it would make little difference how much you give me.”

“But…”

“Please, let it go, Naruto. Believe me when I say you could have done nothing more.”

Sasuke sat down on the other side of the bed and clutched his brother’s hand. Itachi smiled softly at him.

“I believe you have something to tell him, otouto,” he said.

Sasuke got to his feet again and paced the room. He stopped by the window, where the noon-sun was shining in. Naruto had carefully avoided the long stripe of light that painted the dusty floor yellow.

Sasuke held one hand out in the stripe of sunlight.

“I know what you are,” Naruto said. “You’re a natural vampire. Both of you are, and Gaara too.”

“Did Gaara tell you?” Sasuke asked without turning away from the window. “Or was it Kiba? He has never learned to keep his mouth shut.”

“I heard it from Kiba first, but then Itachi said that… that you were born like this, and I just connected the pieces.”

“Do you even know what it means?” Sasuke asked. He was looking at Naruto now, his gaze imploring.

Naruto shrugged. “Not really. Is it… like, literally? You were literally born from a woman?”

Sasuke’s laugh was low and unpleasant. “You could say that.”

“When humans first started dappling in science, they created some real monstrosities,” Itachi said. “That’s what we mean with being born vampires.”

“You were science experiments?”

“Less science, more… religion.”

“Um… Now you’ve lost me.”

“A long time ago,” Sasuke said. “A very, very long time ago, some humans thought they had… godlike powers. They thought they could do anything, create anything, and get away with it.”

“How long ago are we talking?”

This conversation was getting more baffling by the minute.

“Let’s just say that we’re up at a four digit number,” Itachi said.

“They wanted to create an immortal being,” Sasuke said. “Like the gods they worshipped. The only problem was that in order to create something immortal, they also had to take away its humanity.”

“When something was created the way we were, it took its toll on the women who carried us.”

“They died,” Sasuke said. “Each and every one of them died carrying us forth. And still, those beasts that created us didn’t relent. They were thrilled over what they had created. They didn’t care that those women were shredded apart to give birth to us.”

A long silence followed, wherein Sasuke stared intently out the window, his arms

crossed, and Itachi looked lost in thought.

“The creation of natural vampires stopped once the humans realized how dangerous we were,” Itachi said. “At first they treated us like royalty. Gave us everything we wanted. As many slaves as we could eat. And we didn’t question it because… Well, we lived a perfect life. We thought we were deities, above humans in every way.”

“But,” Naruto shot in, “if you’re like, thousands of years old and were raised as gods, why haven’t you taken over the world yet?”

Sasuke laughed bitterly. “You think beings like us are fit to govern the world? Humans would become livestock. It would be the apocalypse as far as the humans are concerned.”

“When it came down to it, we were just glorified pets,” Itachi said. “Through the years we’ve been through everything there’s possible to go through. We have warred, we have destructed each other, we have been threatened to be destructed… and in that time, it has become abundantly clear that we are not fit to rule anything.”

“But… But you must have a lot of knowledge, right? You’ve had thousands of years to acquire that knowledge. You could have been doctors and scientists time and time over. You could have had the time to solve every world problem!”

“I wish it was so, but we are no better than humans in that aspect. Our empire collapsed and vampires started warring each other, driving each other away. We became scattered and went into hiding to recuperate. We did try to build a new empire; we had a fortune to spend after all, but as soon as the humans get wind of us, they try their very best to eradicate us.

Either way, such and idea suggests that we have the rational, cool mind that humans do, but we don’t. We are even more driven by instinct than humans, and very few of us have managed to control that instinct to a degree that allows us to live calmly side by side with humans. Getting a good education as you suggested, and making a life of our own in their world is nearly impossible.”

“So… so no ones ever tried that? You’ve just condemned yourself to a life in hiding?”

“Many have tried, but few have succeeded,” Itachi said, just as Sasuke snapped, “We haven’t condemned ourselves to anything. This is how we must live. There is no other way.”

“But this is not a life!” Naruto shouted. “I don’t want to spend my life – or existence, or whatever – in hiding! I want to be out there, I want to _do_ something!”

Sasuke and Itachi exchanged glances.

“What is it now?” Naruto snapped.

Itachi smiled placidly. He looked tired. “Nothing. Nothing at all. I understand how you feel. Most newly turned look upon this life as a prison. But it’s not. You’ll understand, come time.”

Naruto wanted to tell Itachi that he would never understand because there was nothing to understand. They were superior to humans, so why should they be hiding from them? It should be the other way around!

But now Sasuke was helping Itachi lie down, and Naruto didn’t want to upset Itachi’s already fragile health. He got up and went to the door without waiting for Sasuke. Sasuke caught up to him halfway down the stairs.

“Wait, there’s more I need to tell you.” Naruto stopped and Sasuke continued. “When I… At first I let you bite me. Do you remember that?”

Naruto nodded. How could he forget?

“There was a reason for that. I wanted to make sure you didn’t leave us at that point. It was- _is_ very important that you stay here, with us.”

Naruto nodded. “Okay?”

Sasuke hesitated.

“…Something happens sometimes when another vampire drinks the blood of a natural vampire. It forges bonds and… well, it forges very strong bonds.”

Realization hit Naruto like a fist to the face.

“That’s how you could command me. I felt compelled to do as you said but I didn’t understand why!”

“Yes, and I’m sorry about that, but it was necessary.”

“Then… then how do I get rid of it? When does it stop, or break, or…?”

“It doesn’t.”

Naruto had half a mind to throttle Sasuke.

“So I just have to do whatever you want for the rest of our existence?”

“No… There’s more to it.”

“Oh, go on. I can’t wait to hear the rest.”

“The bond goes both ways. When I bit you, I sealed the bond between us so that not only are you bonded to me, but I'm bonded to you as well.”

Now Naruto understood why Sasuke had been so meek lately.

“So… I can control you now? Or do you still control me?”

“I don’t control you, or you me. But we can compel each other, and who’s in command depends on who’s mentally the strongest at the moment.”

“And right now you’re not exactly at your best with what’s happening to your brother and all…”

Naruto assessed Sasuke, who met his gaze steadily, firmly, without breaking eye contact.

“What did you mean when you said that I only care about killing?” Naruto said.

Sasuke sighed.

“All you fledglings do. Arguably, all turned vampires do.”

He started walking again, and Naruto hurried to keep up.

“But isn’t that an inevitable part of being a vampire? I have to kill to stay alive.”

“Naruto… You wouldn’t understand it if I tried to explain. There’s a chasm between natural vampires and turned vampires, and now that we natural vampires are slowly dying off one by one, there will be no one left with even an ounce of sense to lead the rest.”

Sasuke stopped by the door to his room.

“Either humanity is doomed, or vampires are.”

Naruto started protesting, but Sasuke just turned away. “I’m tired. Let’s talk about this some other time.”

And then he slammed the door in Naruto’s face.

 

\-----

 

Naruto went out alone that night. He thought about everything Sasuke and Itachi had told him. He thought about Itachi dying. The thought made him sad. Even though he’d practically been a walking feeding machine for Itachi, he’d forged a deep bond to him. Then he thought about how many times Itachi had bitten him, and he wondered if Itachi would have the same bond to him as he had to Sasuke… He couldn’t say it felt that way, though.

“You’re a long way from home.”

Naruto got so startled he was in danger of toppling over the edge of the church roof he was perched on. This was a different church than the one he lived it. It was situated on the edge of town, in a quiet environment, and Naruto had chosen it because the odors from the city weren’t so strong around it.

He turned around and his gaze met a pair of milky, pupilless eyes.

Hinata.

“What are you doing here?” Naruto asked.

She shrugged. “Probably same as you. Trying to get away from everything.”

She came over to him and sat down on the roof next to him. She was wearing a lilac hoodie and black leggings, but she still looked stunning. He sat down too; he had leapt to his feet when Hinata startled him.

They sat in silence for a moment while they admired the view of the city lying splayed out beneath them. The church sat atop a hill, at the end of a long, winding road.

“How are you getting along?” Hinata asked.

Naruto shrugged. “Well enough, all things considered.”

“Are you starting to adjust?”

He nodded.

“Good.” She smiled out towards the city. “Beautiful view, right?”

“You come here often?”

“Now and again. When things get to be too much at home, I just need to get away. Clear my mind.”

They lapsed into silence again.

“I’m sorry to hear about Itachi,” she said. She sounded honestly sorry. “I’ve known him for a long time. So many from our clans have fallen to that illness, and I’d hoped that it was over by now. That we who remained were immune.”

Naruto turned to her. “Aren’t you?”

“I am, and so is Neji. And Sasuke and Gaara, I believe.”

Naruto was very relieved at hearing that, although he hadn’t had time to really consider it until right that moment.

“Itachi must have hidden it all this time,” Hinata said.

“You seem genuinely saddened. I got the notion that our clans weren’t exactly friends.”

“Not in the beginning, but then we warred and split up, and ended up living in completely different countries for a long time. The Sabaku’s, Gaara’s clan, stayed in Egypt, the Uchiha’s went to Japan, and we went to Europe. But when humans started cooperating to get rid of us, the Uchiha’s and us found back together and now we stay here under each others protection.”

She smiled at him.

“It’s safer that way. We watch each others back, and in case it gets too crowded, we have outposts that we can send our vampires to.”

“What about the Sabaku’s?”

“Oh… They’re something else. Too proud to cooperate, even though their numbers are dwindling. They still live in Egypt, as far as I know, though I believe they have an outpost east in Europe…”

“How did Gaara end up here, then?”

“I’m not sure. All I know is that he was never on good terms with his father. Eventually, he must have been cast out.”

“His father? How can he have a father? I mean, I thought…”

“When it comes to talk about relatives among natural vampires, it is usually meant in a symbolic way. Itachi and Sasuke aren’t brothers, per se, but they were raised as bothers, and who knows, maybe they share some genes. I’ve never cared to think too much about our origin, and most knows precious little about it. Gaara’s father is the one who raised him and his siblings, who are slightly younger than Sasuke and Itachi, and older than Neji and me, and he’s a real piece of work. I’m grateful that they didn’t decide to move up here with us. Would probably have resulted in a new war.”

Naruto felt tired. He’d had far too much to think about for one night.

“I should go back home,” he said. “It was nice talking to you.”

Hinata smiled. “Likewise.”

After he left Hinata, Naruto caught a man who was out jogging alone in the woods, carefully disposed of the body, and went back to the hideaway. He wanted to talk to Itachi, and despite the fact that Itachi had ensured him that it wasn’t his fault that he was getting worse, Naruto still wanted to do something for him.

Itachi was grateful for the warm, fresh blood, and Naruto let him have as much as he needed.

Afterwards they lay in companionable silence close beside each other.

“Sasuke told me about the bonding,” Naruto said.

“Mhm…”

“And I thought… I don’t think I understand how it works. Like, how are you not bonded to me?”

Itachi chuckled softly.

“It’s not just about biting each other. If it were, then anyone could bond with anyone. First off, the turned vampire has to deal the first bite and drink the natural vampires blood. Secondly, it can only occur between two vampires. And thirdly… It is moot unless both parties one some level are willing to be bonded.”

Naruto stared up into the roof for a long time.

“But I didn’t want to be bonded.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Naruto thought of it for a long time. He thought of the pleasure he’d felt the first time Sasuke bit him, even after having been chased through the woods by him. He thought of how eager he’d been the first time Sasuke encouraged him to bite him… Not just to bite him and feed off him – that had been the hunger – but to sleep with him. That had been something else.

“But… Sasuke doesn’t want to be bonded to me… Does he?”

“He wasn’t supposed to bite you. He knew what it entailed. And despite that… Despite the fact that logic usually win out where he’s concerned… He still did it.”

Naruto was baffled, to put it mildly.

Did this… Was Itachi implying…

“It seems like my brother left out the most important part of the explanation,” Itachi said with a small laugh. “I’m not surprised. He’s always been unreasonably proud.”

They lapsed into silence again while Naruto tried to wrap his mind around all this.

“Originally, feeding off each other was a ritual that natural vampires used to strengthen the bonds in a relationship,” Itachi said. “The ritual can be likened to marriage. When Sasuke bit you, he sealed the contract.”

“So… We’re basically married…?”

He sat up.

“We’re like, vampire-married?”

Itachi just smiled up at him.

“Naruto… Listen… Sasuke loves you. He'd do anything for you. It’s not just the bond talking."

"What... I…"

"Just listen... My life is coming to an end. I would like to die with the knowledge that Sasuke will live on with someone who can be there for him. Do you think you can do that for him?"

“Y-yes, of course, I…”

Itachi grabbed Naruto’s hand and squeezed it gently.

“Thank you.”

 

\------

 

Naruto saw neither Itachi nor Sasuke for the next few weeks. Then he went out hunting again. Most of the clan was present. In the aftermath of the hunt, Naruto once again found he had to see Sasuke. The pull was so strong, it felt like a hook was physically lodged inside him and pulling him back home.

Sasuke was not in his room, but Naruto found him in Itachi’s room.

He was lying there, quietly, just holding Itachi’s hand while Itachi looked like he was sleeping.

Naruto knew that Sasuke hadn’t been hunting for a very long time, probably not for months. There was no scent coming off him, no life in his pale skin, no pulsing core drawing Naruto in, though that didn’t matter. Naruto would give him what he needed.

Yet, no matter what he said, Sasuke didn’t respond. He wouldn’t let go of Itachi.

Naruto sat beside him and touched his neck, leant down to place a light kiss there, just to entice him.

“Not now,” Sasuke said without even looking at Naruto.

Naruto felt a surge of frustration and anger. Why couldn’t Sasuke just give this to him? Why couldn’t he play along? Didn’t he want part of the life surging through Naruto?

He grabbed Sasuke’s arm and tried to turn him towards him, he needed to see his face, but Sasuke whirled around and snarled at Naruto, fangs bared. 

“Get out,” he hissed.

Naruto hesitated. He looked from Sasuke to Itachi and back to Sasuke again.

Itachi opened his eyes a smidgen.

“I won’t need anything tonight,” he said, his voice hoarse. “You can leave, Naruto.”

Naruto got up and hesitated for a moment by the door.

Sasuke turned back to Itachi, his back towards the door, and Itachi closed his eyes.

 

\------

 

Itachi died three days later.

 

\------

Itachi’s funeral pyre was placed on an old, abandoned part of the docs. The whole clan was there, watching the fire licking across Itachi’s lifeless porcelain skin, slowly making him disintegrate like old parchment. Naruto watched Sasuke from the corner of his eyes. If vampires could cry, he wondered if Sasuke would be crying now. He looked blindly straight ahead, his eyes empty.

“Let’s go before the police finds us,” Sasuke said at long last and turned away from the fire.

He brushed right past Naruto without looking at him.

 


	6. Clarity

Sasuke didn’t speak for weeks. He didn’t hunt or eat either. He never left his room. Naruto stocked up for him. He probably hunted far more than he needed to, just to make sure he would have more than enough for Sasuke too.

Gaara came to talk to Naruto one night. He knew that Naruto liked to sit on the roof and watch the city from up high, and that’s where he found him this time too.

He laid one hand on Naruto’s shoulder. The fact that he sought body contact was so unusual that Naruto immediately picked up the seriousness of the situation.

“Naruto… We have been keeping an eye on you lately, and we’ve noticed that you go out to hunt alone a lot…”

“About that,” Naruto hurried to say, “I’m careful, and I go to the outskirts of town…”

Gaara just held his gaze steadily, and Naruto trailed off.

“I trust you to be careful, so that’s not the problem. Though, for the sake of our clan it would be preferable if you kept your hunts to a minimum.” Gaara sighed. “The problem is that we understand what you’re doing, and it won’t help. You’ll have to give him time.”

Naruto felt all energy go out of him like he was a balloon someone had poked a hole in.

“He’ll die if he doesn’t eat,” he said. “He’ll starve himself.”

“He won’t. He knows he has to be here for the rest of the clan. But he needs some time to come to terms with everything. He loved his brother a lot. I think he suppressed the knowledge that he would die, and thus he made it all the much harder for himself to accept it when it happened.”

Naruto mulled this over. He supposed Gaara knew Sasuke better than him. He’d known him for thousands of years, after all.

“Hey… Gaara?”

“Mm?”

“How was Sasuke before? You know, back when all of you lived in Egypt or wherever you were.”

Gaara remained quiet for a very long moment, long enough for Naruto to get the feeling he shouldn’t have asked that question.

“I’m not sure you want to know,” he said in a strangely quiet voice.

“Was it really that bad?”

“I think it will be difficult to understand for someone who once was a human. We had no regard for human life.” He shook his head. “None whatsoever.”

“But how did you end up changing your view on humans?”

“I’m not sure there’s just one answer to that. We became wiser with the years. We experienced loss and love; feelings that proved we were still more human than monster. And I think that, with time, we realized that we were not as indestructible as we thought. We realized that humans are more important to us than we are to them. They can eradicate us and will only be better off for it, but we are solely dependent of them. Do you realize how vulnerable that makes us?”

“But there are millions of people in the world. We could gorge ourselves every day and there would still be more than enough for everyone.”

“It has already been proven that if we tried something like that, they would fight back, and they would win. It happened time and time again. We have been fleeing for centuries. Don’t you think we would have come up with a way to rule over them if we could? We have managed that in small quanta, but on a larger scale… We are not many enough to rule all of humanity, and to be honest, I’m grateful for that. Imagine what the world would become if vampires were in charge. It would become just as desolate a place as the unquenchable raging hunger inside us.”

Naruto lay back and stared up at the dark sky smattered with stars high above him.

“Sasuke said the same thing,” he murmured. “He too believed that if vampires reigned, it would become a desolate world.”

Gaara watched Naruto with something that almost looked like a smile. His eyes certainly had a mildness to them.

“I think Sasuke made a good choice, turning you,” he said. “There was some disagreement within the clan at first, but… there’s something about you…”

Gaara looked away. Then he lay back so that he too could watch the sky.

“Why was there disagreement?” Naruto asked.

“There always is when someone is turned. We try to create as few new vampires as possible.”

“Are you hoping we’ll go extinct one day?”

“Not exactly. We’re just… taking precautions.”

As Naruto stared up at the sky he realized that, no matter how beautiful the night sky was, he still wished he could be able to see the sun and feel its warmth on his skin again, and he wondered if maybe Gaara and Sasuke were right.

 

\------

 

Naruto remembered his parents’ faces, but not what their names where or where they lived. He wondered if those memories would ever come back to him. Maybe his subconscious mind was trying to protect him by reducing the lure of his former life to a minimum. All in all he thought little about it, that human side of himself, and he was grateful for that, or else the deaths of his girlfriend and his best friend would surely have crushed him.

Sasuke was right when he said that he was different now. His old life didn’t matter to him the way he knew it once had. It was a rare gem he hid away in the back of his mind, but it was not something he often longed for or sought after.

Sometimes he thought that Sasuke and Gaara had a stronger conscience than him. Despite how old they were, they seemed to have kept more of their humanity than most turned vampires had.

Naruto was starting to grasp the concern that Itachi and Sasuke had expressed about the future of the vampires, although he merely understood it logically. The natural vampires were dwindling in numbers. Once they were gone, who would be there to keep the other vampires in check? Who would be there to make sure they covered their tracks, or didn’t go on killing rampages?

The short answer was: no one.

Sasuke was right. In the end, either humans or vampires would be destroyed.

And for the sake of the world, he hoped it would be the vampires.

 

\------

 

Naruto kept his distance to Sasuke for another few weeks. He stopped hunting so that the need to go to him would be less acute. But when time trickled past and slowly became months, he knew that he couldn’t wait any longer.

He had to see Sasuke and make sure he was all right.

He didn’t hunt beforehand. He knew that he got unreasonable when he was hyped up on fresh blood. Instead he went to him while he was still hungry. As hungry as Sasuke must be too.

Sasuke was exactly in the same spot where he’d been lying for the past month. Naruto was pretty sure that he was hibernating. He’d asked Kakashi about it, and he’d confirmed that if vampires were out of food, they could hibernate and that way survive for a very long time even without eating.

The body slowly decomposed, though, so it was a last resort.

Naruto couldn’t let Sasuke torture himself like that any longer.

Sasuke was lying in his bed, on his side, and strangely enough, his eyes were wide open. He didn’t look up or react in any way when Naruto entered the room.

Naruto moved slowly over to the bed.

Sasuke didn’t move an inch, though Naruto thought it looked like his eyelashes fluttered slightly. He laid down next to Sasuke on the bed.

For a long moment, Sasuke just stared unseeingly ahead, but then it was like he took a barely discernible breath, and moved minutely.

He opened his hand. In his palm lay the sharingan. Naruto placed his hand over Sasuke’s, encasing the sharingan between their hands.

“It’s the only thing I have left after my family,” Sasuke murmured.

“You really were a family, weren’t you?”

Sasuke nodded. “I had a mother and a father too. Though they were the mother and the father of the whole clan. That’s what we called our kings and queens back then. But after mother and father died… Things changed.

My uncle took over the clan. He swore revenge on the humans because they had betrayed us during the war with the other clans. He called himself our king, and he was the first one to take human slaves.”

“Slaves? So the humans that live here, they’re also slaves?”

“Not anymore. The humans you see here with us today have been with us for a long time. They don’t really have anywhere else to go, so they stay with us. Their lives are prolonged because they’ve drunk the blood of a natural vampire.”

“Kakashi is like that, right? Kiba said he was very old…”

“He was my uncles favorite slave. They developed a really close relationship and I think his death affected Kakashi a lot, but whenever I ask him about it he just changes the subject.”

“Why did you call him uncle?”

“He was the same age as mother and father, so… To us younger ones, all older vampires who weren’t mother and father were uncles or aunts.”

“What happened with your uncle’s plan of revenge on the humans?”

“We wandered a lot in the time after we left the Middle East… You have no idea of the havoc we created. We benefit from wars and we didn’t even need to work hard to come across one. We could just sit back and enjoy while the humans destroyed themselves. We lived like kings back then. Warlords and chiefs feared us and brought us offerings. They thought we were gods. Once we got bored of one place, we moved on. It got more difficult when people started believing in one god, though, so we moved eastwards into China and then into Japan.”

Sasuke trailed off.

“We blended in pretty well in Japan,” Sasuke said. “We lived there for a long time until the government managed to find our hiding place and destroyed it, killing as many from our clan as they could get their hands on. We escaped after that and set course westwards in the hopes of joining some of the other clans that we knew from old. They were our only holding points at that point. Half our clan was eradicated.

The government had hit us even harder than we expected. They had managed to spread a disease among us, and even more of us died on our travels. It affected naturals more than turned ones, and soon only my brother and I were left of the original Uchiha clan. We managed to make peace with the Hyuuga’s who had suffered losses too, although not as badly as us, and we set up hiding places close to each other.

We came here about… two hundred years ago, and for a long time we’ve been able to live here in peace.

But then…” Sasuke suddenly looked very intently at Naruto.

He raised himself to lean on one elbow and pulled his hand away from under Naruto’s.

He played with the sharingan for a moment before pocketing it.

“What happened?” Naruto asked.

“They found out about us again, and they trained vampire hunters to scout for us. As long as we keep a low profile, there’s nothing that can draw them to us. They know too little about us to find us on sight, but if we leave too much evidence behind, they’ll find us. They almost did…”

He hesitated and for some reason he gave Naruto a thoughtful look.

“That time at the massacre?” Naruto asked.

Sasuke shook his head. “No. Before.”

“So the massacre was some sort of revenge mission?”

Sasuke nodded.

He sat up, probably for the first time in many weeks, and swayed precariously. Naruto hurried to lend a supporting hand, but Sasuke brushed it off.

“I need to feed,” he said.

“I’m sorry I don’t have anything for you,” Naruto said.

“I probably need to get out anyway,” Sasuke said. He stood but turned and looked at Naruto. “Will you come with me?”

 

\------

 

They went to the outskirts of town, into an area that was Hyuuga territory.

“Don’t worry,” Sasuke said. “They’ll be more lenient after…”

He let the sentence drop off, and Naruto didn’t ask him to explain. He already knew what he’d been about to say: after Itachi’s death.

He made a sharp turn down a narrow alley lined by dingy little shops with blinking lights in the windows, and led them into a pub that was still open. There were few patrons inside. Aside from the bartender, there were only two burly guys sitting in a corner with half a pint of beer each, and one drunkard lolling over the counter.

Sasuke went over to the bartender and exchanged a few low-spoken words. Naruto’s eyes landed on the television screen that hung in one corner over the bar. The sound was off. At the moment, the news were showing.

Naruto hadn’t watched TV for a long while. He found that the experience was almost a little surreal… it was too normal. Too human. He was about to turn away when the face of a blond man with a youthful smile appeared on the screen and immediately drew his focus. According to the text at the bottom of the screen, the man was the chief of the Konoha police department, and his name was Minato Namikaze.

He barely registered that Sasuke had turned and was talking to him.

Their eyes met, and in that instant Naruto understood.

He could see that Sasuke knew. He _knew_.

Sasuke grabbed his arm and steered him roughly towards the door and out on the street. The door closed behind them with a loud slam.

“He’s my father,” Naruto bit out. “That policeman… He’s my father!”

“Shhh…”

Sasuke looked up and down the street. It was empty. He shoved Naruto against the wall of the pub.

Naruto tried to push Sasuke away, but he held him too tight.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Naruto half-shouted. “You knew all this time! You could have told me!”

“Would it have changed anything?” Sasuke bit out.

Naruto clenched his teeth. He wanted to say yes, but he knew it was not true.

In the end, there was nothing he could do about it. Even knowing who his father was… He could still never talk to him again, never visit him.

“Naruto… There’s something else… Something you should know…”

He slowly let go of Naruto, as though testing if Naruto would stay put.

Naruto didn’t move away but remained pressed against the wall. Suddenly he felt so weak. He almost sagged to the ground.

“Your father is one of the best and most ardent vampire hunter out there.”

Naruto clutched his head. “Fuck…”

“The attack on the college party you were at, it was because of you.”

“Oh no…”

“Naruto… Look at me.”

Naruto looked up when Sasuke pushed his hands aside.

Sasuke looked tired as well as… could it be… remorseful? Most probably it was just a trick of the light.

“I wasn’t supposed to turn you,” Sasuke continued. “A week earlier a dozen vampires from the Hyuuga clan were killed by vampire hunters, among them Hinata’s sister. I’m not sure if Hinata has recognized you, but either way it doesn’t matter. In the long run, I suppose that turning the son of the vampire hunter that killed her sister is a much more satisfying revenge than killing him.”

“Stop,” Naruto croaked. “Just… stop… Please…”

Sasuke stopped talking. He stood quietly in front of Naruto.

After a very long moment Naruto straightened up and lowered his hands. He took a deep breath.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

Sasuke just watched him warily, like he was waiting for Naruto to attack him any second.

“Thank you for not killing me,” Naruto added.

“There’s nothing to thank me for,” Sasuke said quietly. “I simply saw a chance to keep my brother alive, nothing more.”

Naruto felt like he was really seeing Sasuke for the first time. The long lashes that were lowered to hide whatever went on behind those dark eyes, the soft line of his chin, framing a pale and tired face. Itachi’s words came back to him: ‘Sasuke loves you.’

In that moment, Naruto could actually allow himself to believe that.

“Okay,” Naruto said softly. “Let’s say so.”

He touched Sasuke’s cheek and nudged his chin up so that their eyes met. Then he leant in and kissed him so gently that it was barely a brush of lips against lips. He felt Sasuke exhale and relax a little.

The door to the pub opened with a loud bang and then a gruff voice shattered the moment.

“The fuck… Look ‘ere, John.”

It was one of the burly men from inside. He was a bit unsteady on his feet, but that didn’t stop him from stumbling over to them and shove Sasuke. His buddy came to his side and gave Naruto and Sasuke a hateful look.

“Fuckin’ homo's, doing that disgusting shit in the middle of the street.”

“We should teach them a lesson,” the first guy said.

He almost looked cross-eyed where was staring down his nose at Naruto.

Sasuke took Naruto’s hand and pulled him with him so that they put a little distance between themselves and the two men.

“This offends you?” he said and raised the hand that was still holding Naruto’s.

Then he nuzzled Naruto’s knuckles.

One of the men took a step forward with a grim smile on his face.

“You’re really lookin’ to get that pretty face of yours smashed in, aren’t you?”

Sasuke stood his ground.

“Why don’t you try me?”

The man laughed.

“Shame for you, there’s no one around to save you.”

That was true. The street was completely deserted, and since they stood outside of the light from the pub windows, they couldn’t be seen from inside.

Though, it wasn’t they who needed to be saved.

Sasuke and Naruto were both in need for a quick meal, and this time it looked like dinner had walked right up to them.

One of the hunkering men launched himself at Sasuke. He was surprisingly quick for suck a large guy. He aimed for Sasuke’s stomach, but Sasuke nimbly stepped aside and them man stumbled forward. With one single flick of his hand, he sent the man face first onto the dirty cobblestones.

The other man was hesitating. He seemed to sense that something was off.

Naruto grinned, knowing that his fangs were showing, and the man gaped.

“Well, aren’t you going to teach me a lesson?” Naruto said.

The man seemed to have frozen completely.

Naruto walked towards him and finally the man moved, choppily taking a step backwards.

“S-stay away from me!”

Naruto stopped.

“Really? How rude. I thought you wanted to fight.”

The man took another desperate step away from Naruto. He looked like he was about to make a run for it, but Naruto couldn’t let him do that. He moved so quickly that when the man turned around, ready to sprint down the street, or perhaps to run into the pub, he stood in front of him, blocking his way.

The man didn’t have time to as much as scream before Naruto’s hand was around his throat, effectively snapping his neck with the force of the movement. The man fell lifeless to the ground. Naruto swept over him, located his pulse point, and sunk his teeth into it in a matter of seconds.

Everything else faded away while he fed. Only when he felt full and satisfied did he pull back and consider the situation. They had unnecessarily killed two humans, much more than they needed. In addition, they had killed them in the middle of the street. Someone could walk out of that pub, or one of the houses lining the street, any second now.

Sasuke stood and their gazes met.

Without exchanging a single word they agreed on a course of action. They knew that the first thing they needed to do was to erase all evidence from the crime scene. Then they had to regroup and plan what to do next.

Each of them hoisted one of the dead men up onto their shoulders with ease, and carried them to a nearby rooftop where they weren’t in any immediate danger of being discovered.

“We shouldn’t let perfectly good blood be spilled,” Naruto said.

“I’m thinking the same, but it’s risky to bring these two back to the base.”

“Good evening, boys. Fancy seeing you two here at this time of night.”

Naruto and Sasuke both whirled around.

Behind them on the roof stood Hinata and Neji. Hinata was impeccably dressed in a lilac pantsuit and Neji looked dashingly handsome in a perfectly fitted, dark grey suit, his long, brown hair hanging loosely to his waist.

Hinata set her hands on her hips and cocked her head.

“I was just on my way back from a wonderful dinner with some influential friends of mine, doing my best to lure them away from the literal trail of blood your clan is leaving behind, when I come over the most delicious and foreboding stench of blood. And what do I find?”

Naruto dried his hands on his pants. He wasn’t as experienced as Sasuke so he had spilled some blood.

“My clan is not the only one leaving blaring evidence,” Sasuke said levelly. “Barely a month ago a couple of turned from your clan almost got caught by the vampire hunters. Again.”

Neji bristled. “That was not their fault. That damned Uzumaki patrol just happened to be in the area. They seem to be everywhere nowadays.”

Naruto’s attention was sharpened at the mention of the Uzumaki name.

“I see you remember,” Hinata said. She must have been watching him intently in order to pick up the slight change in his expression.

“It’s my surname,” Naruto said.

He had not been aware that he knew such a thing before he said it, but now he remembered. He remembered his mother with the long, bright red hair and the warm eyes, the dangerous temper, and the strong hugs. He even remembered her name: Kushina Uzumaki.

“I didn’t recognize you the first time I saw you,” Hinata said. She came closer to Naruto. “But I thought there was something familiar about you.”

She gave Sasuke a brief glance. “It was bold of you bringing him into our territory. I thought we agreed that he was better off dead.”

“But I think we both can agree that keeping him will be an even more crushing blow towards the vampire hunters,” Sasuke replied smoothly.

Neji snorted. “What a transparent lie to cover up your weakness. All of a sudden, you couldn’t kill this one, insignificant human. It can almost seem like you did it just to spite us.”

Sasuke smirked. “If I wanted to spite you, I would find more fun ways to do it.”

Hinata was still watching Naruto. “How much do you remember about your parents?”

“Not a lot,” Naruto admitted. “I only remember how they looked… I couldn’t even remember their names until now.”

“Your mother is an even more ardent vampire hunter than your father,” Hinata said. “After the massacre, she’s become obsessed with getting rid of us. I’m afraid she won’t hesitate to kill you too, if you were to get in her path, so I strongly advice you to stay away from her. You’re most likely dead to her now.”

Naruto swallowed the heavy lump that had formed in his throat.

“You better get used to it,” Neji said. “Humans want nothing more than to kill us. We awaken anger as well as fear in them. It doesn’t matter who you used to be. I’ve seen fathers kill sons, husbands kill wives…”

“I killed my girlfriend,” Naruto said hoarsely. “So I don’t think I deserve any mercy from humans.”

To his surprise, Neji’s gaze lost some of its cold edge as he looked at Naruto.

“I can see that you still blame yourself for what you did. The fact that you feel guilty about it means you haven’t lost your humanity, unlike some humans. Hold on to that.”

Then Neji looked away. His gaze met briefly with Hinata’s and for a mere second they exchanged looks that were so gentle that Naruto felt like he should look away.

“No matter,” Hinata said. “The deer have no more right to wipe out the wolves than humans have to wipe out us. We happen to be predators and they happen to be prey. We’ll respect them as long as they respect us, but when they don’t, we’ll fight back. Even if we have to play dirty.”

She came closer to Naruto and touched his cheek with soft, gentle fingers.

“I’m sorry this had to happen to you, but it’s simply part of the game. I’m glad Sasuke turned you, though, because I’d hate to see you killed.”

“Back off, Hyuuga,” Sasuke bit out.

Hinata rolled her eyes. Her hand slid down to rest on Naruto’s chest. Naruto felt goosebumps break out across his skin at her touch. The recent feeding was making him exceptionally sensitive.

“You might have been the first to bite him, but you don’t own him.”

Sasuke stepped in between them, and Hinata took a step back. She didn’t exactly look frightened, but she didn’t stand up to him either.

“He’s bonded to me... and I to him,” Sasuke said.

For the first time since Naruto met her, he saw genuine surprise cross Hinata’s face.

“Is that so?” Her eyes lingered on Naruto. “I have to admit, that was a bold move.”

“I knew that we had a connection the moment I first met him,” Sasuke said. “That’s why I couldn’t kill him.”

Naruto was vaguely aware that he was gaping at the back of Sasuke’s head.

Hinata was watching Sasuke intently as though she was searching his expression for some indication of a lie. She didn’t seem to find one. Instead she gave Sasuke one quick, almost imperceptible nod, and Naruto imagined that he saw something pass between them, something that almost made Hinata’s wide, pale eyes look saddened, but the moment was over so quickly that it could have just been something he imagined.

 

\------

 

They took the scenic route home. In other words, they traveled over the rooftops. It worked out surprisingly well and they arrived at home without seeing a single human.

Once they had left their catch to be consumed by the rest of the clan, they retreated back to Sasuke’s room.

Naruto sat down on the edge of the bed while Sasuke took off his jacket and his shoes, all the while standing with his back towards Naruto. Naruto wasn’t sure if it was intentional and that Sasuke felt he needed time to sort through his feelings, just as Naruto did right now, or if he was thinking of something entirely else than the words he had spoken on the rooftop and didn’t even realize how important they had been for Naruto.

Finally, Sasuke turned and it became apparent from his averted eyes and his almost uncertain movements that he knew exactly what Naruto was thinking about. He moved forward with slight hesitation and stopped between Naruto’s legs.

“So…” Naruto looked up at him. “You only kept me for Itachi’s sake, was that so?”

He tried for a small, knowing smirk, but it wavered.

Sasuke watched him with a strange, vulnerable expression that Naruto couldn’t quite decipher. Then he leant down, cradled Naruto’s face in his hands, and kissed him so gently and at the same time so passionately that Naruto lost his breath.

When they finally parted, Sasuke placed a kiss on Naruto’s forehead.

Then he murmured, barely loud enough for Naruto to hear, “I love you.”

 


	7. Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI! This might seem a bit sudden, but this is the last chapter! I hope you've enjoyed the fic so far, an that you'll like this chapter as well ^^

Naruto woke up in Sasuke’s arms, sated and well rested.

He nuzzled the hollow of Sasuke’s throat, and felt him stir.

“Morning,” he murmured.

“I hope not,” Sasuke grumbled.

Naruto flopped over onto his back and tried to remember if there was anything he’d forgotten… He had a feeling that there was something he was supposed to do. And then he remembered it: feeding Itachi.

He still associated hunts with feeding Itachi.

The thought made him sad.

He turned over onto his side again, and tried to think of something else.

“Hey…” he poked Sasuke’s side. “Why does it seem like we’re the only vampires who actually have sex?”

“Because we are,” Sasuke answered without opening his eyes.

Naruto moved over onto his stomach and leant on his elbow. “How come?”

“I don’t know… Usually vampires lose their sexual drive.”

“They don’t get it back right after feeding either?”

Sasuke shook his head. He shifted over onto his back and opened bleary eyes.

“Then… whom did you have sex with before me?”

Sasuke stared at him though narrowed eyes.

“Whom have you been talking to?” he asked.

“Gaara. And Orochimaru…” Naruto grimaced. “He kinda came onto me. Orochimaru, I mean.”

Sasuke sat up. “Did he touch you?”

“Uh… Not the way you think, anyway…“

“That creep. He’s always been a pain in the ass. Not literally… though he would probably have liked that.” Sasuke grimaced. “Being one of the few vampires who still feels desire and then having only Orochimaru as a likeminded is sadly ironic.”

“Then, whom _did_ you sleep with?”

Naruto was incredibly curious now.

Sasuke sighed. “Humans,” he said at last. “It was easier before, when they knew what I was and still wanted me despite it. When we went into hiding I could fool people into thinking I was human if I slept with them right after I had fed. My body would be warm and the fresh blood would thrum through me, making me seem normal. But then fornicating with humans became illegal, and for a long time I just… I didn’t feel any desire. I thought I had lost it until I met you.”

“Aw.” Naruto grinned and squeezed Sasuke’s thigh. “I got your blood rushing again, eh?”

Sasuke snorted.

They leant back against the headboard of the bed and talked about everything and nothing. It was nice just to be close together and have the time to talk together. Naruto had already noticed that Sasuke was more playful and not as ruthless as he first had seemed. He could be carelessly vicious at times, and exceptionally moody, but once he softened up a bit, Naruto saw him for whom he really was. He was reminded of the moment in the street yesterday, when he had seen the gentle vulnerability that lay underneath his carefully composed mask of coolness. Sasuke dared to show him more of that side of him now, and Naruto was grateful that he trusted him enough to do so.

“After I bound you to me,” Sasuke said, “you changed.”

“How so?”

“In the beginning it was torture being bound to you. I don’t know how to explain it, but it was like you were constantly pulling on our bond. Not because you wanted to be free, but because you were tugging me into the inferno that was your confused and muddled mind.

I don’t think many natural vampires have been bound to turned vampires before. I don’t know of any that have. I regretted forging the bond at first. I thought I’d go down with you. But then you changed… You became calmer, you stopped tearing at my mind, and then something switched and suddenly it was like you met me halfway. I think I might have influenced you, instead of you influencing me.”

“Uh… and that means?”

“You’ve probably noticed that turned vampires have less of a conscience than natural vampires?”

Naruto nodded.

“After being bound to me, you’ve become more human.”

Naruto mulled that over for a moment.

“What does it matter, though?” he said. “We’re still as far from human as we can possibly get without resorting to crawling around on all fours.”

Sasuke hesitated before saying, “It does matter. You seem calmer, and it seems like you care more about everything around you. You seem more curious and less angry.”

Naruto leant against Sasuke’s side and rested his head on his shoulder.

“I guess you’re right,” he said. “But isn’t that just part of the transition?”

“Fledglings can be uncontrollable for years, and their anger and blood-thirst usually peak after a few years. It takes maybe as much as a decade for a turned vampire to finally settle down, and even then they keep a certain vengeful carelessness that can follow them to their dying day.

We stopped turning people into vampires because of that. Turned vampires were originally used in warfare. They were born and raised in hate and anger and then unleashed on humans to frighten them into submission. But it didn’t take long until it became obvious that they were too uncontrollable. They killed everything without care for the consequences. In the end we had to start killing our own, and that was difficult on several levels.

Now, the Uchiha clan consists only of turned vampires we have picked up along the way and whom we nurtured into what you see now.”

“So Kiba and Ino and the rest, they were all turned by other vampires than the Uchiha?”

“Yes. You wouldn’t have recognized any of them if you’d seen them back when we first picked them up. My clan was nothing but a shell at that point. It consisted only of me, Itachi, Gaara and Kakashi, and a couple other humans.

Then Itachi started picking up turned vampires who had been abandoned by those who turned them. They were vampires who you’d normally not trust and who probably would have been better off dead. I didn’t believe that they ever could become decent beings again, but Itachi had faith in them, and with time many of them grew attached to us and were willing to live by our ways.”

Sasuke stared off into nothing with an empty and almost broken look on his face. Then he took a deep breath and it was like he reigned himself in from the edge of a cliff.

Naruto pressed a hand to his chest to remind him that he was there, and Sasuke touched the hand and closed his eyes for a moment.

For a while, silence reigned in the room.

Naruto was the first one to break it. 

“If you try to create as few vampires as possible, then wasn't it careless of you to turn me?”

Sasuke shifted to the side so he could look at Naruto like he wanted to tell him something with his eyes alone, something that words couldn’t express. For a long moment he seemed to search for the right words.

“It was strange,” he said. “But I couldn’t kill you. I knew I should, but first I let you flee, and then, when I was about to give you the killing bite… I didn’t.

I took you to Itachi because I didn’t know what to do with you. It’s true what I said about your vitality, though. You had so much life in you. I know that turning you might even be considered worse than killing you, but I couldn’t stand by and watch as all that life flowed out of you.

I knew that you had to live on, somehow.”

Naruto grabbed Sasuke’s face and kissed him.

“I should hate you,” he whispered, his forehead pressed hard against Sasuke’s, their mouths barely brushing. “I don’t know why, but I can’t. I think, perhaps, that it was meant to be this way. I was meant to meet you and bond with you, and live with you for eternity.”

He thought he heard Sasuke draw in a soft breath. He pressed into Naruto’s touch and kissed him. They ended up lying on the bed in a messy tumble of sheets and arms and caressing lips.

Sasuke kissed the juncture between Naruto’s neck and shoulder, kissed down along his collarbone and let teeth scrape skin.

Then they just lay in silence with their arms tight around each other, enjoying the warmth that was still radiating off the other.

“Was Neji right about what he said?” Naruto said after a long moment. “Regarding my mother?”

Sasuke sighed. “Neji is a little biased in that respect. He fell in love with a human girl once, but when she found out what he was, she joined the vampire hunters and tried to kill him. He’s never quite gotten over that and as a result, he hates the vampire hunters with a passion.”

“So… He was exaggerating when he said that my parents wouldn’t hesitate to kill me?”

“I’m not sure,” Sasuke admitted. “But to be honest, I wouldn’t encourage you to chance it.”

Naruto pressed his face against the side of Sasuke’s throat and took in the calming scent of him. He smelled different right after feeding, but not enticing like the scent of blood should be. Rather, there was a warmth to his scent, a mildness, and a familiarity that soothed Naruto.

“I figured,” he whispered.

Sasuke nuzzled the top of his head.

“Does it upset you?” he asked.

Naruto shook his head. “I barely remember them. They’re just like a faint memory, like some old, frayed photography of some people whom I know that I once loved.”

“We might stand face to face with them one day,” Sasuke said. “Can you handle that?”

Naruto absently carded his fingers through Sasuke’s hair.

He imagined the faces of his mother and father as he remembered them, full of kindness and love, and he felt an unexpected but vaguely familiar twist in his heart.

“I don’t know,” he whispered.

 

\------

 

It was a few days later when Ino woke the two of them up from a deep and content sleep.

“You Majesty,” she said.

Sasuke sat up.

“There’s no need to use that title,” he said. “Just use my name.”

She took a step inside the room and gave him a short nod.

“The Hyuuga queen is here. She wants to see you.”

He and Naruto got dressed and followed Ino downstairs to where Hinata was waiting for them in the darkened hall.

“The vampire hunters are on your trail,” Hinata said without preamble.

“Shit,” Sasuke said. “Do they know about Naruto?”

“I think so.”

“How did they find us?”

“You know those two men you killed a few days ago outside a pub? The pub owner remembered you and described you to the police.”

“Fuck… What about your clan?”

“We’re going down with you.” There was a fierce fire in Hinata’s eyes. “We’re not running away this time.”

“We’re not starting a war,” Sasuke objected.

“I don’t care anymore. I’m tired of living in hiding. I’m tired of always waiting in fear for them to pluck us down one by one, like sitting ducks. I want to set an example. I want them to fear us.”

“What does it matter? It’ll just create more vampire hunters. If we even survive. And if more people know about us, we’ll have less chance of ever setting foot outside ever again.”

“Well, I’d rather be dead than live like an animal.”

Sasuke and Hinata were locked in a staring match, and neither of them looked about to give up anytime soon.

“Listen,” Hinata said. “I have managed to make myself a name here. If it weren’t for those vampire hunters, I would be living the perfect life. Instead, I always have to watch my back. Wouldn’t it be ideal if some of these annoying hunters were subjected to a very tragic accident? They live a dangerous life, after all. One never knows what can happen in their line of work.”

“No,” Naruto said.

Both Sasuke and Hinata stared at him.

“No,” he repeated. “They’re my parents and I won’t just let them be killed off.”

Hinata ‘tsked’ and gave Sasuke an annoyed glance. “If only you’d managed to do your job.”

“I thought you were glad I wasn’t killed,” Naruto said.

She rolled her eyes. “That was when you still had enough sense to keep your mouth shut.”

“I agree with Naruto,” Sasuke said.

Hinata gave him an incredulous look.

“I’m not gonna risk the lives of everyone in my clan to stay in a place that is becoming more unsafe by the day. If we’re in danger of being discovered, we leave.”

Hinata huffed. “There’s no talking sense into you, is there?” She shook her head, as though answering her own question. “You always were unreasonably stubborn.”

She left without another word.

Naruto touched Sasuke’s shoulder, gently. He looked tense.

“Thank you for supporting me,” Naruto said.

Sasuke placed his hand over Naruto’s. “I don’t care much about your parents,” he said. “You understand that, right?”

Naruto nodded.

“But,” Sasuke continued, “though I love to rile up a vampire hunter as much as the next vampire, I also have a clan to take care of.”

He squeezed Naruto’s hand gently.

“I think it’s about time I call in everyone for a meeting.”

 

\------

 

The whole clan was assembled in the spacious recreation room. Ino, Kiba and Shino were lounging in one of the couches, while Tenten was perched on the arm of an old wing chair, which Gaara was sitting in. Naruto was standing by the door, and Kakashi and Sasuke stood in front of the unused fireplace.

Sasuke told them of the situation.

“Leaving would mean surrendering one of the few hiding places that is still in the possession of the Uchiha clan,” Kakashi said. “It also means leaving the protection of the Hyuuga clan.”

“We’ve made a life here,” Ino said. “We shouldn’t let those vampire hunters frighten us so easily. They don’t even have proper proof that we exist, and they know too little about us to actually be a danger to us.”

“They know that they can torch us,” Sasuke said.

“They wouldn’t,” Tenten said, but there was uncertainty in her voice. “They don’t have evidence that we live here, and they wouldn’t risk setting fire to a building, especially not one with historical value.”

“If we stay, we’ll have to keep careful watch in case someone is keeping tabs on this building,” Sasuke said. “We’re not gonna give them any reason to believe we’re here. When we have to hunt, we’ll leave unseen in the cover of shadows, and never during a bright moon.”

“I say we stay,” Kiba said. “We’re not gonna let them break us that easily.”

The others cheered to that.

“Alright,” Sasuke said. “Then we’ll stay for the time being.”

He glanced over at Naruto and shrugged lightly.

At least they weren’t planning to harm the vampire hunters, so Naruto wasn’t too upset about the decision. He was almost a little glad that they would stay, because some small, aching part of him had a vain hope of seeing his parents again, if only for once.

 

\-----

 

They didn’t hunt for the next few days. There was always someone on guard, watching for any suspicious people hanging around outside their hiding place. Naruto kept watch with mixed feelings. On one hand he was almost a little exited at the prospect of seeing his parents, on the other he was filled with dread at the thought that he might have to fight them.

Weeks passed by but nothing out of the ordinary happened. Naruto started believing that Hinata had been wrong, or that the hunters had lost their trail. He should be happy about it, but he couldn’t help but long for even a glimpse of his parents… even if it meant putting himself in danger.

Every day he slept in Sasuke’s bed, and every night he kept watch on the top of the church roofs.

It came to a point where they had to brave the outside world in order to hunt. They couldn’t all go out hunting at the same time. Someone had to stay on guard at the base, and besides, they would draw more attention if they were a large group than if they went out in pairs.

Naruto went out hunting together with Gaara. He pulled the hood of his hoodie down so that it covered most of his face in case someone should be keeping an eye out for him.

They snuck through town, keeping to crowded streets, all the way to the very outskirts of town. There they managed to lure a poor, drunken guy into a side street and killed him quickly before feeding, and then cutting his throat to make it look like he had been the victim of a vicious mugging.

Then they snuck back towards the base as quickly and quietly as they had when they left. During the whole hunt, they didn’t speak a word to each other. They were pure efficiency and no hesitation, and they always glanced over their shoulders, making sure they weren’t followed.

And yet, despite their efforts to remain unobserved, they soon discovered that they had someone on their tail. With one small nod, Naruto took off in a different direction, leapt up onto a balcony, and hunched down. No one followed him. They must have gone after Gaara. Just as he let himself relax a little, there was movement next to him; quick and fluid. He shot to his feet and spun around, ready to fight if he had to, but the person who stood before him was not a human. It was Hinata.

He let out a deep sigh.

“You scared me!”

“Naruto,” she cut in. There was something tense and hard in her voice. “The old church in on fire.”

Naruto didn’t need more prompting than that. He wasn’t even aware that he had moved again before he was scaling the wall towards the roof with a speed that he wasn’t aware he was capable of. Hinata stayed on his heels the whole time. It took a moment, but soon Naruto realized that the rest of her clan was there too, running along with them like shadows in the dark.

They stopped at the roof of a tall building. They could see the flames licking up the tallest spire on the church.

Naruto stopped Hinata from continuing towards it.

“Promise me that it won’t come to a fight.”

She gave him a look of annoyed astonishment. “I can’t -”

“Please.”

She stared long and hard into his eyes.

“Naruto,” she said at last. “You’ll have to choose. Either they kill us… or we kill them. Which is better? That you clan dies? That you die? Or that the people trying to kill us die?”

He knew she was right, but it hurt to not know that he had no argument against that.

Hinata kept running, and Naruto stayed on her heel. Gaara had joined them too, and ran by Naruto’s side.

They found the Uchiha clan easily enough. It had been no problem for them to escape the fire at nighttime. It wouldn’t have been a problem at daytime either, since there were secret passages under the ground that Sasuke had shown Naruto a week ago.

They were perched atop a nearby roof, all of them looking grim and miserable.

“I didn’t think they would actually do it,” Sasuke said as Naruto, Hinata and Gaara stopped next to him. “The fire could spread to the nearby buildings.”

“Where are they?” asked Naruto and Hinata at the same time.

Sasuke turned towards Naruto with a warning in his eyes at the same time as Naruto did the same towards Hinata.

“Please,” Naruto said to her. “Let me talk to them.”

Hinata laughed. “Talk? You think you can talk to them?”

Naruto was pretty sure he felt himself blush. “Yeah, maybe I can.”

Hinata crossed her arms. A grim smile had settled on her face.

“Okay. Why not. You can go down there and try to talk to them, but when that doesn’t work out and they kill you, we’ll have our chance.”

Sasuke grabbed Naruto’s arm.

“Don’t,” he pleaded. “They’ll hurt you.”

Naruto placed his hand over Sasuke’s. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I just need to see them. Just this once.”

Then he jumped off the roof and landed quietly in the street below before Sasuke could try to hold him back. He wasn’t sure where the hunters were, so he stopped in the shadows and focused on his hearing and his sense of smell. It wasn’t difficult to find them. They were standing hidden in the burnt out shell of the house that stood opposite the street from the church. It had burned many years earlier and had never been rebuilt. The area around the church was generally in bad condition, and nearly void of people.

Naruto straightened up and walked out of the shadows and onto the street in direct view of the burnt out house. He felt the warmth from the fire against his side. It was almost too much to bear. The firefighters would arrive soon so he had little time.

He slowly walked closer to the burnt out house.

He couldn’t see anyone within. They were hiding well.

He stopped and waited. At least he hadn’t been shot yet, so that was something. Then someone appeared in the doorway to the house. Two people walked out slowly, carefully, brandishing guns.

As they came closer, the nearest of the persons stopped, hesitated, and lowered their gun. Then they took of their helmet and let a cascade of long, red hair tumble down their shoulders.

Naruto recognized her immediately. It hurt to see her again this way. For half a second, he almost felt like running into her arms, like when he was a kid, and let her hold him till everything that alright again. It hurt even more since he knew that he could never do that again, never even hold her.

The other person came up on his mother’s side and took off his helmet. He looked at Naruto with the same gentle, blue eyes that Naruto remembered so well from otherwise foggy memories.

“Mom…” Naruto said hoarsely. “Dad…”

He could see the pain in his mother’s eyes, and the sadness in his fathers. There was no anger there, only grief.

“I’m sorry,” Naruto said.

“Naruto…” His mothers’ voice shook, but she took a deep breath, and continued. “My dear, dear boy… I love you so much.”

Naruto wished he could suggest that they should live in peace together, but he knew that it was impossible. He was a predator, and they were prey. Nothing could ever change that. He could not be their son anymore, because he had become something else. He was not human, and though he could pretend to be, he would never truly be like them again. There would always be a chance that he could lose control.

Besides, he knew that his parents couldn’t let him continue to kill people. If there was a chance that they could stop him, they would. Naruto understood that, and he accepted it.

His father opened his mouth, but closed it again.

Then he took a deep breath and tried again.

“Naruto…” His voice shook lightly. “We love you. You know that. We always will… But…”

Naruto shook his head. “You don’t need to say anything else. I know. I just wanted to see you one last time.”

Before they could make the difficult decision of ending him, he slipped away, so quickly and quietly that they had no idea where he disappeared off to.

He saw them startle and look around, but he had no plans of harming them.

He hurried back to where Hinata and Sasuke were still waiting. The rest of the vampires had left.

“Sasuke…” He said the moment he landed in front of him. “We’ll have to leave.”

Sasuke held his gaze for a very long moment. Finally, he nodded. “The base is lost to us anyway.”

“In the meantime you can stay in my clan headquarters,” Hinata said.

She threw one last glance down towards the street below them where Minato and Kushina still stood. Their faces were upturned, but they looked calm and not searching, as though they were quietly saying their last goodbyes to their son.

 

\-----

 

“Send a message to Orochimaru,” Sasuke told Kakashi once they were assembled in the basement of the old hotel that served as the Hyuuga base. “Tell him that we might be leaving the area. I doubt he’ll want to leave, he should be safe enough where he is, but he ought to have the choice.”

“Where should we go?” Naruto asked.

“To the only place where the Uchiha clan still have a hiding place,” Kakashi said.

“To Morocco,” Sasuke said.

Naruto grimaced. “Morocco? Are you serious? You’re aware that it’s really hot there, right?”

Sasuke snorted. “I’m aware. But that’s only at daytime. It’s cold at night.”

“But…” Naruto still wasn’t convinced it was a good idea. “But how do we get there?”

“We’ll fly at night and in smaller groups, since humans get more nervous the more of us is close among them.”

“So we’ll just fly there?” Naruto felt nervous already. The thought of being crammed into a small space full of humans with no escape…

“Don’t look so queasy,” Sasuke said, correctly guessing Naruto’s thoughts. “You’ll be fine. You’ll feed right beforehand. The humans will have no effect on you.”

Naruto swallowed thickly, but nodded.

He supposed he had no other choice.

 

\-----

 

They left as soon as their tickets were in order. They had been watching the news every day in order to check whether Naruto’s face turned up on a wanted poster, but there wasn’t a single mention of him anywhere. So his parents were giving him a chance to get away and start afresh. At least, if he were out of their jurisdiction, they wouldn’t have to worry about being the ones to end him.

Naruto left together with Gaara and Sasuke. Thankfully it was few people on their flight, and Naruto was seated between Gaara and Sasuke, who kept watch over him. Thought, there was no need because he felt completely calm and unaffected by the scents around him.

They had a stopover in Madrid and stayed there for the day before they continued to Tangier. Naruto fell asleep in the car and didn’t wake up until Sasuke shook his shoulder. The car had stopped in a quiet street with gently rustling green trees leaning over the beige stonewalls lining the street. There was a door in the wall, and Sasuke led them through it into a beautiful, lush garden and up a stone pathway towards the front of a huge house that seemed to grow out of the trees and loom over them in all its pearl white glory.

Naruto had to stop and gape for a moment. Sasuke and Gaara stopped and turned to look at him with obvious amusement.

“Is this… This is where we’re staying?” Naruto said.

“Yes,” Sasuke said.

“I thought you said we wouldn’t stay at a hotel!”

“This isn’t a hotel. It’s our house.”

“House? This thing isn’t a house, it’s a palace!”

“A villa, to be more precise,” Gaara said.

Sasuke grabbed Naruto’s hand and nudged Naruto gently towards the façade of the giant, two-story mansion.

“The Uchiha clan used to be very rich,” Sasuke said.

“No shit…”

Sasuke opened the front door and led Naruto down a chilly hallway. Gaara said goodnight and disappeared down another hallway. Sasuke led Naruto past huge rooms that were richly furnished, though everything was hidden underneath dusty, white sheets.

“I suppose the humans who used to keep this place clean are long dead,” Sasuke mused.

“How long is it since you lived here?”

“Hm… Itachi and I visited a hundred years ago or so... I’m not entirely sure when, time flies so quickly.”

Naruto scratched his head. A hundred years were probably nothing to someone like Sasuke, but to Naruto it was mind-boggling.

“Here,” Sasuke said and opened a door at the end of the hallway. “This is my room.”

There was an adjacent bathroom that could have doubled as a spa resort, and a double bed that could easily have fit four grown people.

A huge glass door led out onto a balcony.

Naruto opened it and took in the view of the dark, still ocean in the distance.

“This place is awesome,” he said. “Why didn’t we come here before?”

Sasuke embraced him from behind and rested his chin on his shoulder.

“I guess we could have come here more often if it wasn’t so tiresome to get here.”

“That’s true… I’m already feeling a bit hungry.”

Sasuke kissed the side of Naruto’s neck. “We’ll feed tomorrow night. There’s no time now, and we need to sleep.”

Naruto couldn’t argue with that.

They lowered the blinds, carefully making sure that the room was sun-proof, and curled up close together in bed.

Sleep came easily.

 

\-----

 

Sasuke woke up in the middle of the day. At first he couldn’t tell what had awoken him. Then he realized Naruto was not lying next to him in the bed anymore. He looked around the unusually bright room. There, by the window, he saw Naruto’s outline against the brightness of the cloudless sky.

He sat up.

“You shouldn’t stay so close to the sunlight,” he said.

Naruto didn’t even turn.

“Do you miss it so badly?” Sasuke asked.

He crawled out of bed and sat down next to Naruto. They were sitting just outside the stripe of sunlight that was brightly outlined on the tiled floor.

“Sitting like this,” Naruto said, “makes me feel like I can almost remember how it felt to have the warmth of the sun on my skin.”

He turned towards Sasuke.

“That’s one of the few things I can never get back,” he said. “I can almost feel alive again after I have fed, but I can never feel the sunlight on my skin again.”

Sasuke took Naruto’s hand and rested his head against his shoulder.

They sat there in silence for a long while. Sasuke closed his eyes and focused on the light thrumming of blood under Naruto’s skin.

“I’ve decided that I think you’re wrong,” Naruto said all of a sudden.

“About what?”

“You believe that when the natural vampires are gone, the turned vampires will either bring about their own demolition, or the demolition of the humans. But I think you’re wrong.”

“And why is that?”

“Because turned vampires also have a piece of humanity left in them, although it’s a different kind of humanity than you turned vampires have. We have once been humans, so we actually have stronger bonds to humanity.”

“That is true, but you don’t have our experience and control over our instincts.”

“Maybe not, but maybe we don’t need it? Maybe our experience with being human will level out the inexperience of being vampires?”

“Centuries of turned vampires gone wild says otherwise.”

“Maybe what we need is consistent training and direction? You know, like with kids? Maybe the reason turned vampires are so wild, is because no one has actually been raised with love and care… like I have been?”

Sasuke turned towards him and looked at him for a long moment, as though checking if he was really serious.

“… But what if you turned out this way because of the bond, and not the way you were raised?”

“Well, that’s left to find out, but even so, I do think that it should be possible to raise turned vampires to become decent beings, given they get enough time and care, yet have strict enough boundaries.”

Sasuke thought it over. “Maybe,” he said at last.

He leant on Naruto’s shoulder again, and felt him kiss the top of his head.

He closed his eyes.

Naruto nuzzled his temple.

“I think I could learn to like this,” Sasuke murmured.

“What? The kisses?”

“Hm… No. Living.”

Naruto put his arm tight around Sasuke.

“What do you mean?” he asked carefully.

Sasuke grabbed Naruto’s hand and intertwined their finger in his lap.

“I mean that, for thousands of years I have merely existed. But now I have finally learned what it feels like to truly live.”

“And what does it feel like?”

Sasuke sat up and looked straight into Naruto’s clear, unguarded eyes. “This.” He pressed his forehead to Naruto’s, their noses brushing, and felt his warm breath on his lips. “It feels like this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for following this fic to the end! I hope you've enjoyed it ^^


End file.
